Lend-Lease Monument

Here in Fairbanks stands a monument to one of the strangest partnerships of World War Two. During the war, the United States sent thousands of warplanes to the Soviet Union to help fight Nazi Germany, and the handoff happened right here. American pilots flew brand new fighters and bombers up through Canada to Fairbanks, and Soviet pilots took the controls and flew them on across the Bering Strait into Siberia and the Russian front.

They called it the Alaska Siberia airway. Nearly eight thousand aircraft made that journey between nineteen forty-two and nineteen forty-five, including thousands of Bell fighters. The sculpture, created by Alaskan artist R T Wallen and dedicated in two thousand six, shows two pilots together, one American and one Russian, allies for a moment in a shared war.