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On Dec. 3 a loud rattling noise was heard near the Sedov. A fissure appeared in the ice. The ice field was split and hummocks began to pile up. The Sedov was drifting southward now. In Moscow, Comrade Stalin thought it was high time to get the 15 heroes home and so he ordered Glavsevmorput's Papinin to go to their aid in the J. Stalin. The J. Stalin left Murmansk Dec. 15. fought gales and ice fields until Jan. 5, when it sighted the Sedov. It took ten days for the J. Stalin to buck her way through the ice to the Sedov. Then the two crews had to heat the Sedov's hull, dynamite the ice to break up an ice cup weighing several thousand tons. The last of the cup was finally torn off on the way to Barentsburg.
From Barentsburg to Murmansk the J. Stalin and her tow sailed a narrow corridor between two cyclones. On Jan. 29, just 959 days after she had set sail in 1937, the scarred and battered Sedov was eased to dockside in Murmansk. Four days later her 15 heroes climbed down from a train in the Moscow station, to be named "Heroes of the Soviet Union," given the Order of Lenin and 25,000 rubles. Secretary Alexander Scherkaboff of the Moscow Communist Party greeted them with these words:
"Your heroic achievement is worthy to be compared to the exploits of the glorious Red Army which has been victorious in the East and the West and is now defending Leningrad and our Soviet Fatherland."
Said Captain Badigin (who was just about to dine with Comrade Stalin): "We of the Sedov never lost heart, because we knew not only the U. S. S. R. but Stalin himself was watching and protecting us."