Chukhnovsky Boris Grigorievich 
(28.03(09.04).1898–30.09.1975) 
 

An outstanding Soviet polar pilot, whose name is widely known in our country and abroad. 
Born in St. Petersburg in the family of a forester scientist. In 1902, the Chukhnovsky family moved to Gatchina, where they settled on Elizavetinskaya Street (now Dostoevsky Street), not far from the “green” house of A.I. Kuprin, with whom the children of the scientist quickly became friends. In the spring of 1915, Chukhnovsky finished the course of the Gatchina Real School (now School No. 4) and entered the Marine Corps. In his eyes, Russian aviation was born in Gatchina. He witnessed the first flight of Legonier in Gatchina in 1909, knew the first Russian pilots - lieutenants Rudnev and Gorshkov, and he himself wasted all his free time on the Gatchina airfield. Gatchina pilots helped to master the airplanes, which was useful to him in his subsequent studies at the Naval School. In his memoirs, Chukhnovsky wrote that in Gatchina he made a choice of profession, feeling himself "recruited by aviation". 
At the end of the Naval Aviation School in Petrograd in 1917, Chukhnovsky received the rank of midshipman. His life was full of many extraordinary events and heroic deeds. In October 1917, he moved to the side of the Soviet government and became one of the first "red-and-young mortals". Already in 1918, on a seaplane, Chukhnovsky provided for reconnaissance the famous ice trip of the Baltic Fleet ships from Helsingfors to Kronstadt, then participated in a civil war in battles against Wrangel, and headed the aircraft of the Volga-Caspian Flotilla. 
In 1924 and 1925 Chukhnovsky together with O.A. Calvitsa participated in the work of the Northern Hydrographic Expedition on Novaya Zemlya. He crossed the Barents Sea on a small single-engine U-20 aircraft bought in Germany, without radio, weather, and ground support with imperfect instruments, flew above the ice of the Kara Sea, flew to Novaya Zemlya, supplied expedition ships with ice and ice data. At present, it is even difficult to imagine the possibility of the flights that Chukhnovsky made. The only motor of its seaplane was inferior in power to the engine of a modern car, the same can be said about the speed of flight. Weak floats would not have been able to withstand landings on the high seas, and the lack of radio communications, moreover, left no chance for salvation.These flights alone are enough to forever inscribe the name of Chukhnovsky in the history of Arctic aviation. 
The “finest hour” in the life of Chukhnovsky was the operation to rescue the expedition of U. Nobile on the airship “Italia”. Chukhnovsky was the first pilot of the aircraft aboard the Krasin icebreaker. It was Chukhnovsky who discovered two people from the Finn Malmgren group, who had gone on foot to Svalbard, after which Krasin was able to save them. Due to the heavy fog, it was not possible to return to the icebreaker. In conditions of poor visibility, the aircraft landed on fast ice, breaking the landing gear. Believing himself to be relatively safe, Chukhnovsky refused to help until the Italian balloonists were rescued. This act made the name of Chukhnovsky legendary, it became known to the whole world. 
Chukhnovsky is one of the organizers and pioneers of ice reconnaissance in the Arctic. In the 1920s – 1930s, there were no air bases on the shores and islands of the Arctic seas, and attempts to base aircraft on sea-going ships proved to be unsuccessful. The air support of the North in those years could only be satisfied by an autonomous-based aircraft. His dream, for the realization of which he did a lot, was the creation of an aircraft with “triple amphibiousness”, i.e. able to fly from the water, snow and land. It was a very bold, but the only right decision for that period. Chukhnovsky clearly represented all the difficulties and hardships that the crew of an ice reconnaissance aircraft based in natural sea bays without any equipment would have to endure. He himself made this decision a reality. The Arctic navigation of 1929 marked the beginning of systematic ice aerial reconnaissance on the Northern Sea Route; from that moment on, Soviet polar aviation appeared. In that year, Chukhnovsky organized, in particular, ice reconnaissance for a caravan of 26 transport ships led by the icebreaker Krasin, transporting Siberian forest from the Yenisei river through the Kara Sea. We can safely say that he was standing at the cradle of the Soviet polar aviation. 
Along with the ice reconnaissance missions, Chukhnovsky organized the development and creation of a long-range ice reconnaissance aircraft for the study of "white spots" in the Arctic. 
Throughout the war, Colonel Chukhnovsky was in the ranks of military aviation, participating in the bombing of enemy bases, guarding convoys of transport ships. 
After the war, he returned to polar aviation: inspected flights, advised aviation engineers, led groups of young aircraft designers, and worked on problems of improving aircraft reliability.

Awarded the Order of Lenin, three orders of the Red Banner, medals. 
He was buried in the cemetery of the city of Gatchina, Leningrad region. 
Cape on the north coast of the island of Northeastern Territory of the Svalbard archipelago.

The bay is to the northeast of Russkaya Harbor Bay on the west coast of the northern island of Novaya Zemlya. Named in 1930 by the expedition of the All-Union Arctic Institute on the icebreaker "G. Sedov".