Special forces pilots

Even schoolchildren know about the ‘Road of Life’ and its role in saving the residents of besieged Leningrad. But few speak of how the city was supplied in the harshest first months of the war, before the ice on Lake Ladoga froze and convoys of trucks set out over it.

What role did Soviet pilots play in rescuing the people of Leningrad? What was the Air Bridge, and how was it created? We embark on a long journey into the Novgorod hinterland, speaking with people who painstakingly reconstructed the events of those terrible years and preserve the memory of the heroism of their ancestors—pilots of special missions.