An memorial hall in commemoration of the famous WWII air route Hump will be opened to the public in Yunnan Province by the end of this month, local officials said Saturday.

The Hump was the dangerous Himalayan route between India and China, along which American and Chinese pilots carried war supplies to aid the Chinese people's war of resistance against Japanese aggression during WWII.

The hall, located in Nujiang Lisu Nationality Autonomous Prefecture, will be the first of its kind in China to display the wreckage of the planes flying on the 500-mile line.

Covering an area of 3,300 square meters, the hall broke ground in July last year and was completed on Sept. 15 this year with a floor space of 1,209 square meters.

Pu Jianxiong, director of the memorial hall, said that over the past years, members of the memorial hall had toured many places in Yunnan and Myanmar and recovered plenty of photo materials and some plane debris.

The most precious one was, perhaps, the wreckage of a cargo plane belonging to the US "Flying Tigers", which was downed in Lushui County of Yunnan, he said.

Opened in 1942, the Hump Route began in the southern Indian state of Assam and reached the southwest Chinese province of Sichuan.

As the major airborne passage connecting China and the Allied Forces during WWII, the hazardous Hump Route saw the loss of more than 500 planes and the life of more than 1,500 US and Chinese pilots.

(Xinhua News Agency October 9, 2005)