Chkalov Island formerly Udd Island (Остров Удд), is a coastal island in the southern end of the Sea of Okhotsk

Sea of Okhotsk

The Sea of Okhotsk is a marginal sea of the western Pacific Ocean, lying between the Kamchatka Peninsula on the east, the Kuril Islands on the southeast, the island of Hokkaidō to the far south, the island of Sakhalin along the west, and a long stretch of eastern Siberian coast along the west and...

. It is located off Schastya Bay, between the shorebound lagoon and the sea. Baydukov Island

Baydukov Island

Baydukov Island , formerly Langr Island or Bol'shoy Langr Island, is a coastal island in the southern end of the Sea of Okhotsk...

 lies only 2 km off its ESE tip.

Chkalov Island is long and narrow. It is 20.5 km long and has an average width of 1 km.

This island is a natural habitat for many birds, like the great knot

Great Knot

The Great Knot, Calidris tenuirostris, is a small wader. It is the largest of the calidrid species.Their breeding habitat is tundra in northeast Siberia. They nest on the ground laying about four eggs in a ground scrape. They are strongly migratory wintering on coasts in southern Asia through to...

, red-necked stint

Red-necked Stint

The Red-necked Stint is a small migratory wader.- Description :These birds are among the smallest of waders, very similar to the Little Stint, Calidris minuta, with which they were once considered conspecific...

, dunlin

Dunlin

The Dunlin, Calidris alpina, is a small wader, sometimes separated with the other "stints" in Erolia. It is a circumpolar breeder in Arctic or subarctic regions. Birds that breed in northern Europe and Asia are long-distance migrants, wintering south to Africa, southeast Asia and the Middle East...

, whimbrel

Whimbrel

The Whimbrel Numenius phaeopus, is a wader in the large family Scolopacidae. It is one of the mostwidespread of the curlews, breeding across much of subarctic North America, Europe and Asia as far south as Scotland....

, bar-tailed godwit

Bar-tailed Godwit

The Bar-tailed Godwit is a large wader in the family Scolopacidae, which breeds on Arctic coasts and tundra mainly in the Old World, and winters on coasts in temperate and tropical regions of the Old World...

 and the common sandpiper

Common Sandpiper

The Common Sandpiper is a small Palearctic wader. This bird and its American sister species, the Spotted Sandpiper , make up the genus Actitis. They are parapatric and replace each other geographically; stray birds of either species may settle down with breeders of the other and hybridize...

. Beluga whales are common off its northern waters.

Administratively Chkalov Island belongs to the Khabarovsk Krai

Khabarovsk Krai

Khabarovsk Krai is a federal subject of Russia , located in the Russian Far East. It lies mostly in the basin of the lower Amur River, but also occupies a vast mountainous area along the coastline of the Sea of Okhotsk, an arm of the Pacific Ocean. The administrative center of the krai is the...

 of the Russian Federation.

History

Chkalov Island is named after Soviet pilot Valery Pavlovich Chkalov (1904–1938), the commander on the Antonov ANT-25 plane that flew on July 20, 1936 from Moscow

Moscow

Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

 through Franz Joseph Land, Severnaya Zemlya

Severnaya Zemlya

Severnaya Zemlya is an archipelago in the Russian high Arctic at around . It is located off mainland Siberia's Taymyr Peninsula across the Vilkitsky Strait...

, Petropavlovsk

Petropavlovsk

Petropavlovsk may refer to:*Petropavlovsk plc, a mining company listed on the London Stock Exchange-Ships:*Battleship Petropavlovsk , Imperial Russia...

 and Khabarovsk

Khabarovsk

Khabarovsk is the largest city and the administrative center of Khabarovsk Krai, Russia. It is located some from the Chinese border. It is the second largest city in the Russian Far East, after Vladivostok. The city became the administrative center of the Far Eastern Federal District of Russia...

. The plane landed 56 hours and 20 minutes later in the evening twilight, in thick fog, on a coastal strip in Udd Island after having covered 9,374 kilometers. The three-man crew remained overnight on this island at the home of a local resident, Fetin'ya Andreevna Smirnova. In order to take off a 500 m long wooden runway had to be built. Udd Island was renamed Chkalov Island by Stalin in commemoration of the record-breaking event.
In 2006, this historical flight was recreated on a Sukhoi Su-30 to mark the 70th anniversary of Chkalov's prowess.