Editing SS Chelyuskin (section)

==Mission==
{{more citations needed section|date=February 2013}}
After leaving [[Murmansk]] on 2 August 1933, the steamship managed to get through most of the Northern Route before it was caught in the [[ice field]]s in September. Eight members of the crew had been dropped off at Kolyuchin Island, so there were 104 people on board including 10 women and two small children. One of the children was only 6 months old: geodesicist Vasily Vasiliev's daughter Karina, born on August 31, 1933, during the voyage in the Kara Sea. After becoming icebound, the ship [[Sea ice|drifted]] in the ice pack before sinking on 13 February 1934, crushed by the [[sea ice|icepacks]] near [[Kolyuchin Island]] in the [[Chukchi Sea]]. During the wreck one crew member, B. G. Mogilevich, was killed by deck cargo. The survivors made a camp on the ice floe. The women and children were airlifted out by [[Anatoly Liapidevsky]] on March 5 after 29 rescue flight attempts, but the men in the crew were not rescued until April after over two months on the ice. The crew managed to escape onto the ice and built a makeshift airstrip using only a few spades, ice shovels and two crowbars. They had to rebuild the airstrip thirteen times, until they were rescued in April of the same year and flown to the village of [[Vankarem]] on the coast of the sea. From there, some of the Chelyuskinites were flown further to the village of [[Uelen]], while fifty-three men walked over 300 miles to get there.

The aircraft pilots who took part in [[search and rescue]] operations were the first people to receive the newly established highest title of [[Hero of the Soviet Union]]. Those pilots were [[Anatoly Liapidevsky]], [[Sigizmund Levanevsky]] (who crashed en route to the camp, but survived), [[Vasily Molokov]], [[Mavriky Slepnyov]], [[Mikhail Vodopianov]], [[Nikolai Kamanin]] and [[Ivan Doronin]]. Liapidevsky flew an ANT-4, the civilian version of the [[Tupolev TB-1|TB-1]] heavy bomber, while Slepnev and Levanevsky flew a [[Consolidated Fleetster]] specially brought in from the US for the mission, and the other pilots flew the [[Polikarpov R-5]]. Two [[United States|American]] air mechanics, Clyde Goodwin Armitstead, and William Latimer Lavery,<ref>The Junior Aircraft Year Book, 1935, p.8</ref> also helped in the [[search and rescue]] of the ''Chelyuskintsy'', on 10 September 1934, and were awarded the [[Order of Lenin]].

As the steamship became trapped at the entrance to the [[Bering Strait]], the [[USSR]] considered the expedition mainly successful, as it had proven that a regular steamship had a chance to navigate the whole Northern Maritime Route in a single season. After a few additional trial runs in 1933 and 1934, the Northern Sea Route was officially opened and commercial exploitation began in 1935. The following year part of the Soviet [[Baltic Fleet]] made the passage to the Pacific where an armed conflict with [[Empire of Japan|Japan]] was looming.

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File:Chelyuskin slowly sinking.png|Sinking of the ''Chelyuskin''
File:Cheliuskin P Novitsky 1933.jpg|Chelyuskin, 1933, photo by Novitsky
File:Chelyuskin survivors drift - Building the airstrip.png|Chelyuskin survivors building the airstrip
File:Chelyuskin survivors drift - Greeting the first rescue airplane.png|Greeting the first rescue airplane
File:Chelyuskin survivors drift - Scientific observations never ceased.png|Photo titled as "Scientific observations never ceased"
Chukchi Sea5KOI.png|Location of [[Kolyuchin Island]]
Леваневский Ушаков Слепнев на Аляске.jpg|From left to right: Joe Crosson (brother of [[Marvel Crosson]]), [[Mavriky Slepnyov]], [[Georgy Ushakov]], [[Sigizmund Levanevsky]], radio operator of [[Ladd Army Airfield]] in [[Alaska]] during the expedition to rescue the crew of SS ''Chelyuskin''.
</gallery>