(Valentina Grizodubova’s bust in Moscow, 1998).

Shipmate Vic met Valentina in 1998, just five years after her passing in 1993. None of us knew her then. Vic brought her up since he had been visiting Admiral of the Fleet Sergei Gorshkov back in 1998. He had wanted to do that since he had opposed the Admiral’s operational ships from 1977 to his participation in the summer the USSR collapsed in 1990.

He was assigned to the Industrial College of the Armed Forces at the time, studying the Space Studies curriculum in what had started as the Army Industrial College. ICAF was not the inspiring name the National Defense University was looking for, and in 2012 it was re-named the Dwight D. Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy in honor of the General. Dwight had graduated from the school when it was part of Army Education, and the training helped prepare a generation for massive land war in Europe.

It is now thoroughly Joint Service. and the educational institution tasked with preparing selected military officers and civilians for senior leadership positions dealing with the resources required for national power.

So, Vic’s seminar group was in Moscow to get further transportation to St. Petersburg and discussions with Russian commercial space launch people who abruptly decided they didn’t want to talk after the delegation had checked into lodgings near the Kremlin in Moscow. That left the group awkwardly stuck in the capital with nothing official on the agenda.

Alternatives had to be found. That is how he found his little party at the Russian equivalent of Arlington National Cemetery, the grand grounds of Vvedenskoye.

(This is Vic with Admiral Gorshkov, 1998).

Vic said for security reasons they traveled as a seminar group, and walking away from the tomb of the Fleet Admiral there was an extraordinary bust of an imposing woman. The inscription was in Russian script and could have celebrated potato or vodka production. That woman would go unrecognized at Socotra House except for her gaze for nearly thirty years. Her story was worth waiting for.

Valentina’s story turned out this week in competition with the other stories our Section Leader Miles was juggling. There is the new development scheme for the Boro Neighborhood in which Fairfax County is attempting to plant a new walkable 15-minute community. Or the upraor about the recently released proposal of building a new casino to have someplace to walk to.

That is a toxic tale, so Miles announced we would cover the revelation that Valentina Grizodubova was a legendary Soviet aviator and the first woman awarded the status of Hero of the Soviet Union. If not for the language and bureaucratic hurdles, she would have competed with Amelia Earhart as the most renowned female pilot from any nation in the 20th Century.

In this time of war, it is useful to recall her as a Ukrainian who was proud to be a Russian.

Her most famous achievement was as co-leader with two other women of the of the record-breaking 1938 nonstop flight from Moscow to the Far East (4,006 miles) aboard the Tupolev ANT-37 “Rodina.” The name is a basic tenet of the Russian spirit, since it translates as “Motherland.”

The story of the epic flight is worth its own longer story, since it involved over 26 hours of airborne flight east from Moscow to the marshy flats of Siberia. Running out of fuel and exhausted, Rodina began to sputter. Valentina looked over at her companions co-pilot Polina Osipenko and Radio operator Marina Raskova. Marina was told to parachute to safety and Valentina and Polia rode it in to a crash landing near the Sea of Okhotsk.

Their straight line flight was the longest recorded by female aviators to that date and the three women were renowned. Valentina was awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union Award and the Lenin Prize, recognizing her unique achievement. But of course she wasn’t done. She commanded a heavy bomber squadron in the war against the Germans, and was a leader in commercial aviation during the Cold War.

Which is why Vic’s ICAF seminar stood around her, marveling at the bold look sculpted into her bust. And thinking she might have been able to tell the Space Studies Group just how to look at new things. And the long reach into space.

Copyright 2025 Vic Socotra

www.vicsocotra.com