Ilyushin Il-2 :: Nauka ~ Tehnika ~ Military

The Ilyushin Il-2 Shturmovik (Russian: Ил-2 Штурмовик) was a ground attack aircraft in the Second World War, produced by the Soviet Union in large numbers. In combination with its successor, the Ilyushin Il-10, a total of 36,163 were built, making it the single most produced military aircraft design in all of aviation history as well as the third most produced aircraft in history behind the Cessna 172 and the Polikarpov Po-2. It was a prominent aircraft for tank kills with its accuracy in dive bombing.

To Shturmovik pilots, the aircraft was simply the diminutive "Ilyusha". To the soldiers on the ground, it was the "Hunchback," the "Flying Tank" or, the greatest of compliments, the "Flying Infantryman", the postwar NATO reporting name was "Bark". 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. Joseph Stalin paid the Il-2 a great tribute in his own inimitable manner: when a particular production factory fell behind on its deliveries, Stalin sent the following cable to the factory manager: "They are as essential to the Red Army as air and bread."

Design and 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 loaded, the Ilyushin weighed more than 4,700 kg (over 10,300 lb), making the armoured shell about 15% of the aircraft's gross weight. The prototype, which first flew on 30 December 1939,[5] won the government competition against Sukhoi Su-6 and received VVS designation BSh-2.

The BSh-2 was overweight and underpowered, with the original Mikulin AM-35 1,370 hp (1,022 kW) engine designed to give highest power outputs at high altitude. Because of this it was redesigned as the TsKB-57,a lighter single-seat design, with the more powerful 1,680 hp (1,254 kW) Mikulin AM-38 engine, a development of the AM-35 optimised for low level operation. The TsKB-57 first flew on 12 October 1940.[5] The production aircraft passed State Acceptance Trials in March 1941, and was redesignated Il-2 in April.[7] Deliveries to operational units commenced in May 1941.

Production

The Il-2 was produced in vast quantities, becoming one of the most widely produced military aircraft in history. 249 had been built by the time Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941.[8]

Production early in the Great Patriotic War was slow, due to the aircraft factories near Moscow and other major cities in western Russia being relocated east of the Ural mountains after the German invasion. Ilyushin and his engineers had time to reconsider production methods, and two months after the move, Il-2s were again being produced. The tempo was not to Premier Stalin's liking, however, and he issued the following telegram to Shenkman and Tretyakov:

You have let down our country and our Red Army. You have the nerve not to manufacture IL-2s until now. Our Red Army now needs IL-2 aircraft like the air it breathes, like the bread it eats. Shenkman produces one IL-2 a day and Tretyakov builds one or two MiG-3s daily. It is a mockery of our country and the Red Army. I ask you not to try the government's patience, and demand that you manufacture more ILs. This is my final warning.
—Stalin[4]

As a result, "the production of Shturmoviks rapidly gained speed. Stalin's notion of the Il-2 being 'like bread' to the Red Army took hold in Ilyushin's aircraft plants and the army soon had their Shturmoviks available in quantity."

source: Wikipedia