On June 18–20, 1937, the Soviet aircrew under the command of Valery Pavlovich Chkalov made a transpolar flight. Starting from Moscow, after 63 hours in the air, the ANT-25 aircraft landed at a military airfield in the US city of Vancouver (Washington).

The first representative of the American authorities, who met Valery Chkalov, Baydukov and Belyakov, was General Marshall, the head of the local garrison. He took the pilots to his home to let them have rest. Tailors were also sent there with civil suits to be adjusted to fit the Soviet pilots. Later, Alexander Antonovich Troyanovsky, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the USSR to the USA, arrived at the general’s house, and an official reception was arranged.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt received the airmen at the White House. He was very friendly, congratulated the pilots and made jokes, and Chkalov’s crew, in turn, expressed their gratitude to him for the meeting.

What followed were numerous official and social events, rallies, and meetings with the participation of the heroic Soviet pilots. Once, at a dinner party hosted by the Explorers Club and the Russian-American Institute of Arctic Explorers on June 30, 1937, Chkalov said his famous words,

A mass rally of workers took place in New York, organized by the editors of the “Sovetskaya Rossiya segodnya” (Soviet Russia Today) magazine. In 3 hours, 10,000 tickets were sold. The Soviet pilots were greeted with a storm of applause. Everyone raised from their seats. The melody of “The Internationale” started playing.

The word of the chairman was addressed to the Soviet pilots,

According to eyewitnesses, the audience was in raptures. Excited, people leaped to their feet, and the podium was covered with flowers.

In other US cities — Portland, San Francisco, Washington, and so forth — the same thing happened: the hero pilots were greeted with enthusiasm everywhere; Americans were very interested in them.