How to build an airfield in a swamp in a month and a half, why American Studebaker trucks have two different numbers, and who is buried under an obelisk made of aircraft parts – all this was investigated by the expeditionary group of the Russian Geographical Society and specialists from the Ministry of Defense. At the abandoned airfields, the search specialists found a lot of interesting things.
Trucks with dual citizenship
To build Tanyurer Airfield in 1944, it was necessary to move 59 thousand cubic meters of dirt in the remote tundra – this is about six thousand KAMAZ trucks. 400 workers went to the hard-to-reach area, far from any settlements. A party of lumberjacks floated timber for construction along the Chukotka rivers for 800 kilometers. People were working ahead of schedule and exceeding plans by 200-250%. In just 75 days, the construction was completed, and the airfield appeared among the swamps and impassable bushes.
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"We found out in the archives that 14 American Studebaker vehicles were delivered there. Three of them we managed to find. They remained in Tanurer after the airfield had been built. After it ceased to function, the trucks were abandoned, probably because it was very difficult to bring them back. I would like to note that the discovered equipment is preserved extremely well – this is a unique case. On some cabins, which remained almost intact, two different numbers are clearly visible. The first is American. All equipment sent to the USSR was given numbers with ‘USA’ – these inscriptions on the trucks are well preserved. And above or next to them, Soviet airfield numbers are indicated as well. Thanks to them, there is hope that we will be able to trace the fate of the discovered vehicles."
Ivan Anokhin, director of the Center for Contemporary History
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Tanurer was one of the intermediate airfields of the Krasnoyarsk-Uelkal air route. After the war, a military unit was located there. The airfield had been used until about the mid-60s, after which it was closed. Over time, the tundra has thoroughly hidden the traces of human activity.
"The speed with which the natural environment absorbs anthropogenic objects is amazing. The territory of the former airfield is heavily overgrown with alder, willow, and cedar trees up to four meters high, that turned it into an impassable forest-tundra. The aerodrome village is almost completely destroyed; the buildings have become ruins. Among the surviving facilities are only the meteorological station building, the bathhouse, and the building of the wind farm, which, on the basis of typological analysis and comparison with historical photographs, can be attributed to the period of the Great Patriotic War."
Pavel Filin, Candidate of Historical Sciences, participant of the expedition
To find traces of previous buildings, remnants of equipment and runways, it was necessary to thoroughly study the archival documents in advance. Once on the ground, the members of the expedition took aerial photographs, conducted topographical survey of the area, geological and geodetic work. As a result, it was possible to determine the boundaries of the village itself, the location of the runway and taxiways. In addition to the Studebakers, the remains of other vehicles were found – the ZIS-5, the American REO tractor, the Willys, and others. In addition, the search specialists found a lot of barrels with the US Navy and US Air Force markings, and fuel pumps.
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“We found the crash or storage sites of the aircraft: large twin-engine aircraft of the Li-2 type were found in eight different spots. They were made at Tashkent Aviation Production; in total, more than two thousand such aircraft were produced. We established the serial numbers of the discovered machines and found out that they helped in the maintenance of the Alaska-Siberia route."
Sergey Katkov, lead scientist of the expedition
In addition to equipment, the members of the expedition hoped to find the remains of the runway. Research in the archives helped to find out that the airfield slabs for its construction were delivered by water. American landing barges brought 70 thousand perforated metal planks – they were laid on top of the fill dirt, forming a durable "highway" for aircraft. The search specialists found one barge in the area of the meteorological station – the scientists suggest that it has been there since the 40s. The runway itself could not be found for a long time.
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“We found fragments of slabs, but we did not see the runway laid out by them in the place marked in the archival plans. Since some of the found slabs were tied with steel ropes, we came to the conclusion that when Tanurer was closed, the airstrip was simply dismantled and the tracks were taken out. Despite some disappointment, we continued exploring the territory of the former airfield and found a part of the runway – apparently, it was a taxiway or a parking lot for aircraft. It was preserved in the middle of dense bushes; it was completely invisible. We realized that we had stumbled upon a fragment of the slabs laid together by tapping them with a shovel. This area is about 30 by 60 meters, and it is still perfectly preserved; if you clear it, you can land helicopters."
Ivan Anokhin, director of the Center for Contemporary History
With the help of ground-penetrating radars, the explorers found out that to create the runway, it was necessary to pour a layer of dirt about half a meter high. "Our ultimate goal is to understand how each airfield was built, to find the surviving artifacts, because all this is our history," Ivan Anokhin comments.
The length of the strip is 1200 meters, the width is 60. To build such a runway is colossal work. And still it was necessary to lay taxiways, parking areas, working in swamps, in difficult weather conditions, suffering from clouds of mosquitoes and midges. “We were well prepared and equipped, and yet we had a hard time, and we spent only six days at Tanurer,” says the director of the Center for Contemporary History.
In addition to the search operations, the expedition members put in order a lopsided stele installed in the cemetery of the aerodrome village. The monument marks the burial place of the crew of a transport aircraft that crashed in the early 1950s.
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"The obelisk is made of plane parts; it was erected in 1953. 15 military men are buried at this place. We assume that they were in a plane crash. We plan to conduct research in the archives and establish who these people are and what happened to them. We are glad that we managed to carry out the reconstruction of the monument."
Ivan Anokhin, director of the Center for Contemporary History
After exploring Tanyurer, the members of the expedition returned to their base. For the first stage of the expedition, this is Anadyr. At the moment, the search specialists have worked in Anadyr itself, Tanyurer, Uelkal, and Chaplino. “The Aviation Commandant's Service of the 182nd Heavy Bomber Aviation Regiment of the 326th Long-Range Aviation Division in Anadyr and its commander Lieutenant Colonel I.I. Albu, as well as representatives of the administration of the villages, and Beringia National Park are helping us a lot,” notes Pavel Filin.
Wooden runway
Uelkal Airport was the base on the Krasnoyarsk air route. According to the recollections of local residents, it had been used until 1981, so the runway was repeatedly rebuilt, lengthened and widened. The members of the expedition hoped to find the original runway built during the war years. The construction process was unique.
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"Uelkal Airfield is located on a sea spit, where pebble deposits are easily eroded. Therefore, wooden gratings were used for construction, the holes in which were filled with specially brought loam and fill dirt mixed with the available gravel and pebbles. I came across a photograph of the Airacobra aircraft, which is standing on a runway made of wooden gratings. When one of the search teams discovered the remains of a wooden grating, we realized that we found the strip we had been looking for. Geophysical research confirmed that under 40 centimeters of the backfill there are heavily watered gravel soils, that can easily form quicksand – they, of course, would not be able to hold a plane."
Sergey Katkov, lead scientist of the expedition
Scientists have identified two types of gratings – on the runway itself and on taxiways with anchorages. In the runway area, it was also possible to find perforated metal tracks, which, presumably, could be used to extend the strip during the war years. In one day, the search specialists managed to examine Uelkal in detail: military topographers carried out topographic surveys, geophysicists worked with a ground penetrating radar and dug soil pits in the runway to find out the composition of the underlying rocks, the architect and artists explored the aerodrome village, and historians learned from the local residents the details pertaining to the airfield.
“The head of the local administration Vyacheslav Viktorovich Kevkun and the director of the school Nadezhda Vasilievna Kozlovskaya helped us a lot. Thanks to them, it was possible to locate the crash sites of two aircraft: the transport G-1, judging by the remains of yellow paint on the corrugation, this is a polar aviation aircraft; and a fighter – we found its tail section; presumably, this is a Yak. One plane was found near the runway, its wing sticking out of the water in the lagoon. The second is 10 kilometers to the southwest along the coastal spit."
Pavel Filin, Candidate of Historical Sciences, participant of the expedition
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Since after the war there was a military unit in the airfield area that existed until the early 2000s, historical artifacts are mixed here with garbage and remnants of equipment from later times. "All this requires cleaning, but always with the participation of historians, because among the scrap metal there are interesting objects of technology, German and American barrels from the war, and other historical artifacts that are important not to lose," notes Pavel. In addition, the expedition members were impressed by the abundance of whale skeletons lying right on the runway. Obviously, the local residents in the post-war period butchered the sea animal in the same place where the planes once stood.”
"Nearby there is a lot of rubbish, destroyed houses of post-war construction, but we still managed to find a fragment of one small old aircraft with an air-cooled engine of the U-2 biplane type, but differing in landing gear. Now we are trying to establish the exact type of the machine. The serial number of the aircraft, LA-11, has been preserved on one of the hood fragments. This is a 1947-1950 aircraft – these were used during the Korean War, and in the post-war period in Chukotka they performed the tasks of an air defense interceptor. We hope to establish its fate by the aircraft number. "
Sergey Katkov, lead scientist of the expedition
There are other interesting finds, in particular, trophy barrels of aviation gasoline with the inscription "Wehrmacht". The galvanized containers are well preserved. "If you wanted, you could use them now," says Sergei.
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Spit airfield
On August 12, the expedition members explored Chaplino, the easternmost airfield of the Krasnoyarsk-Uelkal route, located on a spit on the shore of the Bering Sea. Its construction began in the summer of 1944 and was completed by the end of the year. A couple of years earlier, the spit had already managed to "work" as an airfield.
"A squadron of ten R-39 Airacobra fighters, led by pilot Pyotr Gamov on a B-25 bomber, made an emergency landing on the spit in the fall of 1942. The planes were coming from Alaska, but on Soviet territory Gamow received a radiogram that they were not cleared to land in Uelkal Airfield. All 11 aircraft successfully landed on the spit in Chaplino and the next day, after a transport aircraft with heaters to start the engines arrived from Uelkal, they reached their destination."
Pavel Filin, Candidate of Historical Sciences, participant of the expedition
Since then, the shape of the spit has changed – the explorers note that part of the strip is now washed away and covered by the coastal sandy wall. But this did not prevent the expedition members from discovering three types of aircraft tracks, American and Soviet, as well as the remains of a large bomber aircraft, presumably TB-1 or TB-2. They also found fragments of corrugated aluminum skin with remnants of green paint, and fragments of the fuselage.
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"The team worked hard. We are satisfied with the results," summarizes Sergey Katkov. In the meantime, exploration continues, new searches lie ahead. In total, the members of the expedition plan to explore ten airfields of the ALSIB route.
AlSIB – the air corridor connecting the USSR and the USA – appeared during the Great Patriotic War. Under the Lend-Lease agreement, the Western Allies supplied us with fighters and bombers, and we needed a year-round and round-the-clock air route along which Soviet pilots could ferry aircraft to the front. Despite the inaccessibility of the areas where the airfields were built, they were erected in the shortest possible time, in just five to eight months. Since 1942, 8,094 aircraft had been delivered to the front along the AlSIB route.
Olga Ladygina