The exhibition equipment Tsarskoe Selo earlier handed over to a local history Museum in Novgorod region now showcases artifacts of WWII.

On 2 October 20201, the museum in the village of Khvoinaya unveiled its permanent display commemorating the Air Bridge that connected the Nazi-besieged Leningrad to the rest of the country in 1941-44.

Marking the 80th anniversary of the Siege's beginning, the display tells about the hardest period of autumn and winter in 1941, when only air connection was possible with flights over Lake Ladoga.

The glass cases from Tsarskoe Selo now contain war-time documents, photographs and aviation artifacts.  

Noteworthy is the U.K. Royal Air Force (RAF) flight suit of pilot Veniamin Korotkov, Commander of the Moscow Special Assignment Air Group. In 1943, officers of Korotkov's elite transport aviation unit were covertly delivered to the RAF station Errol in the east of Scotland. There they learned to operate one hundred of modified twin-engine Albemarle bombers given by the British Government to the Soviet Union when the shortage of transport aircraft became acute for the USSR. The pilots had to ferry the aircrafts to Moscow by a nonstop night flight across the North Sea and enemy-occupied territories. The Albemarle operation became an important experience of the allied cooperation during WWII.