Air Bridge to Sakhalin: Problems of the First Year of Operation of the Island Airline

Abstract

Since the Sakhalin Region is completely located on islands, aviation has been and will be of great importance in the transport system of the region. Air routes connect the mainland with the islands and the islands with each other. The launch of the airline was an expected and extremely necessary event for the development of the Northern Sakhalin. In January 1930, pilot Mikhail Vodopyanov laid an air route from Khabarovsk to Okhu and to Alexandrovsk-Sakhalinsky. The journey from the mainland to Sakhalin, which used to take several weeks, has now been reduced to a few days. This has had a significant impact on life islanders, because before they could get to the "mainland" only by sea or by dog sledding. The path laid by Vodopyanov eventually became known as the "Highway of Heroes", since driving planes along it required ingenuity and courage from pilots. Vodopyanov's flight marked the beginning of a large and difficult work on adapting the island to air traffic. The Far Eastern Department of Dobrolet, which organized these shipments, experienced significant difficulties with personnel, finances, and transport fleet. The article is devoted to the first the year of operation of the airline connecting Sakhalin and the mainland. The author used the documents stored in the Russian State Archive of Economics. Their analysis showed that at that moment air transportation could not cover the entire population of Northern Sakhalin, which needed them. The results of the first year of work showed the leadership of the Far Eastern civil aviation in which direction it is necessary to move to establish regular flights.