By coincidence of the most incredible circumstances, fame came to this man only decades after the events that changed his fate. We are talking about 26-year-old naval pilot Yana Nagursky, one of the forgotten heroes of the Arctic …
This story began far from the Arctic basin, in the office of the head of the Main Hydrographic Directorate of the Naval Ministry, Lieutenant General Mikhail Efimovich Zhdanko, famous for the whole of St.
One of the three
General Zhdanko was destined not only to lead the preparation of the rescue operation to search for Georgy Sedov's expedition, but also to use the capabilities of the young Russian aviation for the first time.
It was in this office that the plan of the operation for the search in the ice of the Arctic Ocean for the expeditions of Georgy Sedov, Georgy Brusilov and Vladimir Rusanov was developed. Back in May 1912, after the Russian Council of Ministers refused to finance his expedition to Senior Lieutenant Sedov, a "Committee for Equipping an Expedition to the North Pole" was created, and with the money collected by this public organization, the same memorable voyage of the schooner "Holy Great Martyr Foka ". Considering,that two years later, Sedov and his companions should have had food supplies only until the fall of 1914, under the pressure of this "Committee", the Council of Ministers on January 18 decided "to allow the Maritime Department to take over, with the participation of the Ministry of Trade and Industry, the organization of a state rescue expedition to bring Sedov and his companions to Arkhangelsk."
Despite the fact that the polar voyages, led by Lieutenant Brusilov and the geologist Rusanov, were organized on private funds, on February 20, 1914, the Council of Ministers, by a special resolution, also instructed the Naval Department to send special ships to search for sailing schooners Brusilov and Rusanov.
On the urgent advice of the patriarch of polar voyages Fridtjof Nansen, Zhdanko included flight crews in the search groups. Looking ahead, let us say that three pilots were enrolled in these units. One of them, an experienced pilot Yevsyukov, finding himself for the first time in the Arctic, immediately gave up flying and with the first opportunity retired to the mainland. A member of the hydrographic expedition of the Arctic Ocean (1910-1915), Captain Aleksandrov, at the very first attempt to take off, crashed his Farman, Promotional video:
putting an end to this in Arctic flights.
The third pilot, Lieutenant Yan Nagursky, after a two-hour conversation in Zhdanko's office, gratefully accepted an offer, which was rather flattering for himself, to make search flights in the Arctic. Nagursky was a talented pilot, a graduate of the Gatchina aviation school, and was friends with the famous pilot Peter Nesterov.
In 1913, fate scattered two friends. Nesterov was seconded to Warsaw, where he continued his studies for the rank of a military pilot, while Nagursky remained in Gatchina. It so happened that they were not destined to meet again.
In May 1914, the pilot Nagursky went to Paris, where he was to select one of the machines of the "Maurice Farman" model and select a mechanic for himself. However, there were no local specialists willing to go to the Arctic. Mechanic Evgeny Kuznetsov was found in Russia when Nagursky arrived at the place of departure - in Aleksandrovsk-on-Murman (now the city of Polyarny). Here, in Aleksandrovsk, his acquaintance with the head of the upcoming expedition, Captain 1st Rank Islyamov, took place. Nagursky's car was placed on the deck of the Pechora steamer, which became a temporary shelter for the crew of a seaplane, which Russian witches immediately dubbed the "flying whatnot".
Flights in dreams and in reality
Meanwhile, on August 13, 1912, the Pechora steamer left Aleksandrovsk and headed for Novaya Zemlya, from where, according to the plans of the Hydrographic Department, search flights were to begin. “… I will never forget the feelings that I experienced when I was left face to face with the harsh and mysterious Arctic, - many years later Jan Nagursky will write in his book of memoirs“The First Over the Arctic”. - All the time you could hear the crackling of ice floes approaching each other. Suddenly there was silence and … again a terrible noise … We assembled our seaplane for only 48 hours. Then they took off. We flew low, carefully examining the surface of the sea. Our task was to look for traces of the missing expeditions."
During this first flight, which took place on August 21 and lasted 4 hours and 20 minutes, Nagursky drew attention to a hut on the shore of Pankratyev Island. On the way back, after examining the Russian harbor, the first polar pilot also made his first Arctic water landing, in the immediate vicinity of this little house, which he and the mechanic Kuznetsov carefully examined.
It just so happened that during the second flight of Lieutenant Nagursky, another item was added to the plan approved by General Zhdanko. At the request of the captain of the steamer "Andromeda" Pospelov, without knowing it, he also made the first Arctic ice reconnaissance from the air, the results of which, I must say, did not please the captain of the "Andromeda" at all. The fact is that all the straits between the large and small islands of Pankratyev were filled with young ice, in the waters of which the plane "Maurice Farman" had to be landed at the very coastline of the Big Hare Island.
In a small Norwegian hut on this island, Nagursky and Kuznetsov did not find traces of the expedition of Georgy Sedov. Just in case, the aviators organized a small aviation warehouse not far from the astronomical sign, built, most likely, by the Sedovites.
During a visit to another Norwegian hut on the Big Hare Island, together with the Andromeda sailors, this search group stumbled upon a warehouse laid by Sedov's expedition, in which a note was discovered that on the way to the North Pole a stop would be made on Franz Josef Land … A few days later, on September 3, the schooner Gerta joined the Andromeda, and the head of the expedition, Islyamov, announced a new task to Nagursky: fly as far north-west of the Pankratyev Islands as possible, where suddenly, according to the leadership of the expedition, in Russkaya harbor one could have stumbled upon Sedov's schooner "The Holy Great Martyr Phoca".
To save fuel, Jan Nagursky went on this flight alone. The flight was difficult, there were solid ice fields abeam the Big Hare Island. They drifted southward, threatening to keep the Andromeda and Greta in their arms until spring, or even until the polar summer. On the way back, Nagursky warned Pospelov and Islyamov about this, who, without delay, urgently took their ships to Krestovaya Guba, where Yan Nagursky landed.
A few days later, Nagursky was ordered to disassemble the seaplane and hastily return to the mainland. Russia was at war, and an experienced military pilot, now with the rank of lieutenant, took his place in the ranks of the hydro aviation unit based on the island of Ezel. During one of the patrol flights over the Baltic, his plane was shot down by a more successful German pilot. Nagursky's comrades reported to the headquarters of the flight detachment that Lieutenant Nagursky had died in battle.
Through the veil of time
Without suspecting it, this page of forgotten Russian history was first published by the famous Polish writer Czeslaw Centkevich in his book "The Conquest of the Arctic", which was published in 1952, that is, 38 years after the story told above. In this edition, Cheslav, not without pride, informed the reader that his compatriot Yan Iosifovich Nagursky was the first to master the Arctic sky, who for many years served in the armed forces of his second homeland and died defending Russia in the Baltic sky. About this book and about the further fate of Lieutenant Nagursky told the Soviet radio listeners the own correspondent of the All-Union Radio in Warsaw. And as it was said on the air, in fact, the wounded lieutenant Nagursky was picked up by a Russian submarine. After treatment in one of the hospitals, Yan Iosifovich in 1918 moved to his homeland. For many years those who knew this outstanding pilot considered him dead. Those who were already familiar with him in Poland did not even suspect that he was the very pilot who was not only the first to rise into the Arctic sky, but also the first to conquer this polar airspace.
Boris LIVSHITS