Flying suit of Russian airman goes on display
A leather flying suit issued to a Russian pilot who served at RAF Errol in World War II has gone on display at a museum in Russia.
The sheepskin outfit has been carefully kept by the family of Commander Veniamin Korotkov, one of a group of men from Russia who spent time flight training in Perthshire during 1941.
The Russian connection with RAF Errol has been commemorated recently with a memorial to a plane crash in Fearnan ( it went down beside Loch Tay in a test flight accident having left the air base) and a year ago a magnificent memorial stone was installed beside Errol Parish Church to commemorate the brave Russian airmen who came to RAF Errol during WWII to help the Allied war effort.
The Russian pilots were brought to Scotland on a secret mission.
Having honed their skills, the foreign flyers ferried twin engine Albemarle bombers - given as British allied aid - across the North Sea to Moscow.
There is a matching memorial stone to the one in Errol placed in Russia at the village of Khvoinaya, south east of St Petersburg.
The airmen were based in Perthshire in autumn-winter 1941, the hardest phase of the Siege of Leningrad (now St Petersburg), when the only way to the enemy-encircled city was by air and the daily bread ration was reduced to 125 grams.
Every morning, the DC3 Douglas planes heavily loaded with food supplies took off from the Khvoinaya airfield hidden in the pine woods and flew along the dangerous air route controlled by Luftwaffe fighters to Leningrad.
The name of the village means ‘pine- trees’. It is surrounded with endless pine forests and that is why the location for the WWII aerodrome was chosen - to hide the transport aircraft base from the German reconnaissance planes.
On the return flights they evacuated the starving citizens from Leningrad.
Rus s i a n h i s t o rian Anna Belorusova has been hugely involved in marking the Russian airmen’s connection to Scotland.
Anna explained how the stone monument came to be erected in Errol: “Two years ago, when we were considering various options for a memorial in Errol, Brigadier Sir Melville Jameson came up with an idea that it should be a stone from Russia.
“Whether by chance or it was chosen, on that very day I happened to be at Khvoinaya village where in front of the local history museum I saw a purple red memorial stone shaped as an eternal flame.
“The rare rock, moved from the northern lands by a glacier millions of years ago, had been found by a local forester and installed by the villagers near the former airfield to honour the airmen.
“The Khvoinaya rock happened to be a ‘cousin’ of the famous Shoksha quartzite mined in Karelia, which the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier by the Kremlin Wall is lined with.
“That guided us in what the Errol Memorial Stone should be like.
“It was executed of the Shoksha crimson quartzite by a renowned Karelian sculptor Aleksandr Kim and the Petrozavodsk Foundry made similar looking cast iron boards for the both memorials, in Russia and Scotland”.
On Saturday, October 2, a memorial hall was opened at the Khvoinaya Museum.
The village museum tells the story of the Leningrad Siege Air Supply Operation based on the declassified WWII documents from the Moscow state archives.
Part of the memorial display is dedicated to the airmen’s stay at RAF Errol.
Two interpretation boards tell the story of the two red memorial stones.
Included are portraits of Perthshire dignitaries like Provost Dennis Melloy and Brigadier Melville Jameson. Their images stand in pride of place on information boards written in Russian, explaining why Errol in Scotland was so important to the wider mission to break the siege.
The highlight of the museum display, officially opened this week, is a unique and never before seen exhibit - an RAF flight suit worn by the Russian air unit’s Commander Veniamin Korotkov.
The Russian airmen stationed at RAF Errol were part of the top secret 305 Air Unit formed by the British Command specially for the Albemarle ferrying operation.
Each Russian crew member was provided with a sheepskin suit bearing a RAF logo stitched into the lining.
The suits went back home to Russia.
But it is believed that just the one worn by Commander Korotkov survives to be seen today. The garment is now approaching 80 years old.
His grandson Oleg Shevtsov, a Moscow-based journalist, said: “My grandfather died in 1967, when I was only nine. He brought the flight suit from his top secret mission in the UK, we knew nothing about, and it has been carefully preserved by his daughter Ida, my mother, among his treasured memorabilia.
“As a teenager, I often used to put it on, feeling as if my grandfather’s warmth and strength was embracing me.
“My two sons and I are very happy that he and his heroic fellow airmen are now commemorated both in Russia and Scotland.”
Sasha Mizikova, an 18-year-old art college student in St Petersburg, who contributed in the exhibition design, said: “In June 1943, 12 senior Russian airmen, including my great grandfather Pilot Commander Pyotr Kolesnikov, took a train from Errol to York to visit RAF Linton-on-Ouse.
“There they witnessed the preparation for a heavy night raid on Dusseldorf and 36 Halifax alifax bombers take off into the dusk.
“In his detailed report of f that visit, Colonel Korotkov very movingly wrote about the youth and composure of the British crews they had met, four of whom failed to return. urn.
“Those Bomber boys were ere about the same age as I am m now.
“A great many of their ir Russian peers never r returned home from the e bloodshed of the Eastern n
Front. Those memories are fading with each new generation and that is what the memorials are for – lest we forget.”