Soviet fliers set nonstop record

July 14, 1937: Three Soviet aviators in a huge single-engine monoplane landed triumphantly in a Riverside cow pasture. They had made a lengthy trans-polar trip to get there -- from an airport 20 miles outside Moscow.

“All the world had three new aviation heroes today -- a trio of smiling Russian fliers who scaled the top of the globe, linked Moscow and Southern California and set a mighty 6,700-mile nonstop flight record,” The Times said.

In 62 hours and 17 minutes, pilot Mikhail Gromov, with co-pilot Andrei Yumashev and navigator Sergei Danilin, had broken the previous record by more than 1,000 miles, the newspaper said.

At a Riverside officers club, “the triumphant aviators posed for hundreds of photographs in the same clothes they wore on the voyage: Gray slacks, silk shirts and soft leather shoes,” The Times said. “Long before landing, they had doffed their fleece-lined flying suits. They grinned like schoolboys.”

All three aviators became Soviet generals during World War II. A site three miles west of where they landed is designated California Historical Landmark No. 989 in their honor. Their trip was later officially measured at 6,305 miles.