Ilyushin Il-2
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The Ilyushin Il-2 Shturmovik (Template:Lang-ru) was a ground attack aircraft of World War II, and was produced by the Soviet Union in huge numbers; in combination with its successor, the Il-10, a total of 36,163 were built. It is considered to be one of (and very possibly the single) most produced aircraft design in all of aviation history.
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Development
The idea for a Soviet armored ground-attack aircraft dates to the early 1930s when Dmitry Pavlovich Grigorovich designed TSh-1 and TSh-2 armored biplanes. However, Soviet engines at the time lacked the power needed to provide the heavy aircraft with good performance. Il-2 was designed by Sergey Ilyushin and his team at the Central Design Bureau in 1938. TsKB-55 was a two-seat aircraft with an armoured shell weighing 700 kg (1,540 lb), protecting crew, engine, radiators, and the fuel tank. Standing empty, the Ilyushin weighed more than 4,500 kg (almost 10,000 lb), making the armoured shell about 15% of the aircraft's gross weight. The prototype. which first flew on December 30, 1939, won the government competition against Sukhoi Su-6 and received VVS designation BSh-2. However, BSh-2 was eventually rejected in favor of a lighter single-seat design, the TsKB-57, which first flew October 12, 1940. The original Mikulin AM-35 1,370 hp (1,022 kW) engine proved too weak and was replaced by the 1,680 hp (1,254 kW) Mikulin AM-38 before the aircraft entered production.
The aircraft entered production in 1941 as Il-2, and 249 had been built by the time Germany invaded Russia on June 22, 1941.
Operational history
The Il-2 aircraft played a crucial role on the Eastern Front, and in Soviet opinion it was the most decisive aircraft in the history of modern land warfare. Flying day and night, they could defeat the thick armour of the Panther and Tiger I tanks, and occasionally shot down Bf 109s when the German pilots got careless while attacking them. Josef Stalin paid the Il-2 a great tribute in his own inimitable manner: when a factory building them fell behind on its deliveries, Stalin sent the following cable to the factory manager: "The Red Army needs the Il-2 as it needs air or bread. I demand more. This is my last warning."
The devastating abilities of Il-2 were best demonstrated during the Battle of Kursk. On 7 July 1943, marauding aircraft destroyed 70 tanks from the German 9th Panzer Division in just 20 minutes. On another occasion, 3rd Panzer Division lost 270 tanks and suffered 2,000 casualties during a non-stop two-hour barrage. The 17th Panzer Division lost 240 of its 300 tanks during another four-hour raid.
Thanks to the heavy armour protection an Il-2 could take a great deal of punishment and proved a hard target for both ground and aircraft fire. Some pilots favoured aiming down into the cockpit and wing roots in diving attacks on the slow, low-flying Il-2 formations. Several Luftwaffe aces claimed to attack while climbing from behind, out of view of the rear gunner, and aim for the Il-2's non-retractable oil cooler. The veracity of this has been disputed by some Il-2 pilots in post-war interviews since Il-2s typically flew very close to the ground (cruise altitudes below 50 m (160 ft) were common) and the radiator protruded a mere 4 in (10 cm) from the aircraft. A major threat to Il-2 was the German ground fire. In post-war interviews, Il-2 pilots reported 20 mm and 50 mm artillery as the primary threat. While the fabled 88 mm gun was formidable, low-flying Il-2s presented a fast-moving target for its relatively low rate of fire and while occasional hits were scored, Soviet pilots apparently did not treat the "88" with the same respect as high-flying Allied bomber crews. The armored tub ranging from 5 to 12 mm (0.2 to 0.5 in) in thickness and enveloping the engine and the cockpit could deflect all small-arms fire and glancing blows from larger-calibre ammunition. There are reports of the armored windscreen surviving direct hits from 20 mm rounds. Because of this ability to absorb damage Luftwaffe pilots referred to the Il-2 as the Betonflugzeug (Concrete aircraft). Unfortunately, the rear gunners did not have the benefit of all-around armor protection and suffered about four times more casualties than the pilots. Added casualties resulted from the Soviet policy of not returning home with unused ammunition which typically resulted in repeated passes on the target. Soviet troops often requested additional passes even after the aircraft were out of ammunition to exploit the intimidating effect Il-2s had on German ground troops who had given it the nicknames Schwarzer Tod (Black Death) and Eiserner Gustav (Iron Gustav). The Finnish nickname was Maatalouskone ("The Agricultural Machine" or "Crop Duster")
While Il-2 proved to be a deadly air-to-ground weapon, heavy losses resulted from vulnerability to fighter attack, and so in February 1942 the two-seat design was revived. The IL-2M with a rear gunner under the stetched canopy entered service in September 1942, and surviving single-seaters were eventually modified to this standard. Later changes included an upgrade from 20-mm to 23-mm to 37-mm cannons, aerodynamic improvements, use of wooden outer wing panels instead of metal, and increased fuel capacity. In 1943, the IL-2 Type 3 or Il-2m3 came out with redesigned wings that were swept back 15 degrees on the outer ends. Performance and handling were much improved, and this became the most common version of the Il-2. A radial-engine-powered variant of the Il-2 with Shvetsov ASh-82 engine was proposed in 1942 to remedy projected shortages in Mikulin inline engines. However, ASh-82 was also used in the new Lavochkin La-5 fighter which effectively secured all available engines to the Lavochkin bureau. The Sukhoi Su-2 ground attack aircraft had a radial engine and was produced in small quantities, but had to be removed from service after Soviet anti-aircraft artillery often mistook it for German aircraft, often with lethal consequences.
After the war the Il-2 could be found in service with several Eastern European countries for some years, but most of the Il-2/10 planes were scrapped after the advent of military jet era. Only a handful of Il-2 survive to this day, including museum rebuilds of crashed airframes. In recent years several Il-2 wrecks have been located and recovered from Lake Balaton, a large, shallow lake in Hungary, which is located near the historic site of a large WWII tank battle.
Famous IL-2 Pilots
Among the pilots who gained fame flying the IL-2, was Senior Lieutenant Anna Yegorova, a female pilot who flew 260 missions. She was decorated three times, the last "posthumously", as she was presumed dead after being shot down. In fact, she managed to survive imprisonment in a German concentration camp. Jr/Lt Ivan Grigorevich Drachenko, another IL-2 pilot, was reputedly one of only four men who were both decorated as Heroes of the Soviet Union and also won all three of the Orders of Glory. Pilots Begeldinov, Mylnikov, Alekseenko, and Gardeev received two gold stars of the Hero of the Soviet Union.
In an amusing anecdote, in 1942 Hero of the Soviet Union T. Kuznetsov was shot down while returning from a reconnaissance mission. Kuznetsov was able to escape from the wreck and hid nearby. To his surprise, a German Bf 109 landed near the crash site and the pilot began to scrounge the wrecked Il-2 for souvenirs. Thinking quickly, Kuznetsov ran to the German fighter and used it to fly home, barely avoiding being shot down by Soviet fighters in the process.
Typical of Soviet WWII aircraft, many Il-2 were "gifts" presented to specific pilots and partially paid for by organizations like hometowns, factories, or comrades of another fallen pilot. The most famous of these was an aircraft purchased with the savings of a seven-year-old daughter of the fallen commander of the 237th ShAP. Learning of her father's death, the girl sent 100 rubles directly to Stalin asking him to use the money for an Il-2 to avenge her father. Remarkably, Stalin actually received the letter and 237th ShAP received a new Il-2m3 with the inscription "From Lenochka for father" on the side.
IL-2 Rear gunners: a deliberate sacrifice?
In his book Inside the Soviet Army, Viktor Suvorov alleges that the lack of protection for IL-2 rear gunners was part of a deliberate policy. Suvurov claims that from 1942 on all Soviet airfields had attached penal companies of air gunners. These companies were made up of prisoners who were considered to be "enemies of socialism". The air gunners were not provided with either armour protection or parachutes and were reliant entirely on their machine guns to ensure their own survival. The death rate among the air gunners was exceptionally high and Suvurov alleges that the Marshal of the Air Forces, A. E. Golovanov, came up with a special device to keep the guns pointing up after the gunners were killed. Otherwise attacking Luftwaffe pilots would realise the air gunner was dead and concentrate on that aircraft. According to Suvurov, prisoners who survived could theoretically clear their sentences after 9 missions. However, the prisoners were always transferred to mine clearing or other units for "medical reasons" before this could happen.
While Suvorov's allegations may have some veracity, it is important to note his strong anti-Stalin bias as a GRU defector and other controversial claims about Soviet role in WWII. Many Il-2 pilots and rear gunners do not remember seeing or hearing about any prisoner crews, and there is some evidence that the entire notion of "suicide crews" was a product of German propaganda. Most Il-2s produced after 1944 and Il-10 had armor for the rear gunner, and the initial omission was far more likely the result of the gunner being an afterthought (Il-2 was designed as a single-seat aircraft) added during the crisis years of the war rather than a deliberate act.
Variants
- TsKB-55 - two-seat prototype
- BSh-2 - VVS designation for TsKB-55 rototype.
- TsKB-57 - single-seat prototype
- Il-2 - Single-seat production model, AM-38 engine
- Il-2M - Two-seat production model, 20 mm ShVAK cannons replaced with 23 mm VYa cannons, uprated AM-38F engine
- Il-2M3 or Il-2 Type 3 - swept outer wings, further uprated AM-38F
- Il-2 Type 3M - 37 mm Nudelman-Suranov NS-37 cannons instead of 23 mm VYa cannons
- Il-2T - torpedo bomber version for the Soviet Navy armed with a single 533 mm (21 in) torpedo, largest sunk ship was about 6,000 t of displacement
- Il-2U - training version, also known as U-Il-2
Operators
- Bulgaria, China, Czechoslovakia, North Korea, Poland, Soviet Union, Yugoslavia.
Specifications (Il-2M3)
References
- Donald D., Lake J. (eds.) (1996) Encyclopedia of world military aircraft. AIRtime Publishing. ISBN 1880588242
- Liss, W. (1968) Aircraft profile 88: Ilyushin Il-2.
- Шавров В.Б. (1994) История конструкций самолетов в СССР 1938-1950 гг. (3 изд.). Машиностроение (Shavrov V.B. (1994) Istoriia konstruktskii samoletov v SSSR, 1938-1950 gg. (3rd ed.). Mashinostroenie. ISBN 5217004770) (History of aircraf design in USSR: 1938-1950)
External links
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