North Pole-1 (russian: Северный полюс-1) was the world's first Soviet
manned drifting station in the
Arctic Ocean
The Arctic Ocean is the smallest and shallowest of the world's five major oceans. It spans an area of approximately and is known as the coldest of all the oceans. The International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) recognizes it as an ocean, a ...
, primarily used for research.
North Pole-1 was established on 21 May 1937 and officially opened on 6 June, some from the
North Pole
The North Pole, also known as the Geographic North Pole or Terrestrial North Pole, is the point in the Northern Hemisphere where the Earth's axis of rotation meets its surface. It is called the True North Pole to distinguish from the Ma ...
by the expedition into the high latitudes Sever-1, led by
Otto Schmidt
Otto Yulyevich Shmidt, be, Ота Юльевіч Шміт, Ota Juljevič Šmit (born Otto Friedrich Julius Schmidt; – 7 September 1956), better known as Otto Schmidt, was a Soviet scientist, mathematician, astronomer, geophysicist, statesm ...
. The expedition had been airlifted by aviation units under the command of
Mark Shevelev. "NP-1" operated for 9 months, during which the
ice floe travelled . The commander of the station was
Ivan Papanin. On 19 February 1938 the Soviet ice breakers ''
Taimyr'' and ''
Murman'' took four polar explorers off the station close to the eastern coast of
Greenland
Greenland ( kl, Kalaallit Nunaat, ; da, Grønland, ) is an island country in North America that is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is located between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Greenland ...
. They arrived in
Leningrad
Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
on 15 March on board the icebreaker ''
Yermak''.
The expedition members, hydrobiologist
Pyotr Shirshov, geophysicist
Yevgeny Fyodorov, radioman
Ernst Krenkel, and the commander Ivan Papanin,
were awarded the
Hero of the Soviet Union
The title Hero of the Soviet Union (russian: Герой Советского Союза, translit=Geroy Sovietskogo Soyuza) was the highest distinction in the Soviet Union, awarded together with the Order of Lenin personally or collectively for ...
title.
References
Exploration of the Arctic
Polar exploration by Russia and the Soviet Union
1937 in the Soviet Union
Arctic research
Arctic expeditions
1937 in science
20th century in the Arctic
Expeditions from the Soviet Union
North Pole
{{Soviet-stub