North Pole-2 had a military mission, which was not covered by the press, and the expedition members were under a pledge of secrecy for a long time. The USSR resumed polar explorations only after the war in the early 1950s, when the government decided to relaunch North Pole expeditions. These stamps were the first to attract public attention not only from collectors but others as well and they quickly became very rare All of Moscow came to meet the Chelyuskinites, and the Soviet post issued a series of stamps portraying pilots, Otto Shmidt and Captain Voronin. Seven pilots, including Sigizmund Levanevsky, who also needed help, became the first Heroes of the Soviet Union. An air rescue mission started at the beginning of March, but it only managed to evacuate the camp on April 13, 1934. The crew and the passengers (104 in total), except one man who perished, abandoned the ship and built the Shmidt Camp, or the Chelyuskinite Camp, on ice, where they lived, worked and even carried out research for two months. The Chelyuskin was caught in ice fields in the Chukchi Sea and sank on February 13, 1934. Head of the expedition Otto Shmidt decided to navigate the same route aboard a heavy dry-cargo ship to coordinate sailing between freighters and ice breakers. In August 1933, the Chelyuskin ice breaker left Murmansk to continue exploring sea routes and promote navigation: in 1932, the Alexander Sibiryakov ice breaker sailed from Arkhangelsk to the Bering Strait and hence navigated the entire Northern Sea Route. SS Chelyuskin crew's story plays a special role in the history of Polar stamp collecting. On July 27, 1931, stamps on envelopes were cancelled on both vessels, which then exchanged the mail: 50,000 postcards weighing 420 kg in total Both stamps were designed by Vasily Zavyalov, who would later become a leading post graphics master. The USSR was represented by Ivan Papanin aboard the ice breaker, and Soviet radio operator Ernst Krenkel on the zeppelin. Special stamps were issued to commemorate this meeting, and the Soviet and German governments had agreed the vessels will exchange mail in Tikhaya Bay. The Malygin had proved itself in several expeditions in the Arctic Ocean, including the search for Nobile's airship Italia, and the Graf Zeppelin was known for its daring long-distance flights and the first full flight around the world. In the USSR, the history of polar philately begins in 1931, when a series of stamps dedicated to the Malygin ice breaker and its meeting with the LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin in Tikhaya Bay was issued. The Arctic has prompted one of the most interesting areas for collection, polar stamps, which has continued for many years. However, this American pilot's interesting sentiment also concerns the Arctic. He was referring primarily to polar research in the Antarctic because his main achievements were connected with this continent. "Without a doubt, radio is a great invention, but post is a miracle," the famous pilot and Arctic researcher Richard Byrd once said.
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