Brotherly greetings to the valiant sons of our Motherland!

Congratulations on the successful fulfillment of the plan of the historic flight.

I firmly shake your hands.

I. Stalin.

Pravda. September 14, 1936.

Note: S.A. Levanevsky (1902–1937) was a legendary polar pilot, holder of the Gold Star of Hero of the Soviet Union No. 2 (1934). He was awarded the Orders of Lenin, the Red Banner of Labor, and the Red Star. V.I. Levchenko (1906–1937) had been Levanevsky's permanent navigator since 1933 and served in the Black Sea and Baltic Fleets. He was a holder of the Orders of Lenin and the Red Star.

In 1936, Levanevsky and Levchenko received a government assignment to familiarize themselves with models of seaplanes produced in the USA, to express their views on purchasing them for the USSR, and to ferry one of the purchased aircraft to Moscow.

The pilots chose the Vultee V-1A seaplane. On August 5, 1936, the Los Angeles-Moscow flight was started; its route passed through Alaska, Chukotka, and the Arctic hydroairfields, from which many polar-aviation aircraft were then taking off and landing.

Passing through San Francisco, Wellen, Yakutsk, and Sverdlovsk, they arrived in Moscow on September 13, 1936, covering a distance of 13,000 kilometers. For this flight the crew commander Levanevsky received the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, while navigator Levchenko was awarded another high decoration, the Order of Lenin.

On August 13, 1937, as members of one crew, Levanevsky and Levchenko disappeared without a trace during a Moscow-North Pole-Fairbanks (USA) flight. Despite searches that continued for about a year, the aircraft was never found. According to one of the best-supported versions, the disaster occurred not far from the coast of Alaska.