The Region - News from June 28, 1987

An angry group of war veterans in San Jacinto unleashed a storm of anti-Soviet fury and tore down a Russian flag flown in honor of two Soviet aviators who landed in this desert community five decades ago, police said. City officials welcomed a 20-member Soviet delegation in a ceremony marking the 50th anniversary of a record-setting flight from Moscow that ended in a cow pasture just west of town. But about 15 residents, many of them veterans of foreign wars, marched on City Hall, demanding that Russian flags being flown around town be brought down. One Soviet flag was torn down and stuffed in a garbage can, police said. It was July 12, 1937, when three Soviet fliers took off in a single-engine ANT-25 loaded with 2,500 gallons of fuel. When they landed 62 hours and 17 minutes later, they had traveled 6,295 miles non-stop.