(Ilyushin) Il-2 Sturmovik @·AIRCRAFTUBE

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Il-2 Sturmovik

The Ilyushin-2 Sturmovik ground-attack aircraft was one of the most important Soviet combat aircraft of World War II. While Russian technology is not always highly regarded in the West, the Il-2 was well-designed and highly effective at its task, was produced in great quantity, and was one of the great combat aircraft of war.

The Soviet government was very interested in antitank aircraft during the 1930s, and inconclusive work was done on the concept through most of the decade.

In late 1938, as war was becoming more likely, another design request for an antitank aircraft was issued, and a team under Sergei V. Ilyushin at the Soviet Central Design Bureau came up with a new design, a two-seat aircraft designated the TsKB-55, sometimes translated as CKB-55. Two prototypes were ordered, the first of which first flew in October 1939.

Another team under Pavel Sukhoi built a competing aircraft, the Su-6, but the Sukhoi design was too late and the Ilyushin aircraft won the contest. The Ilyushin design was then redesignated BSh-2, for "Bronirovannyi Sturmovik", or "Armoured Assault Aircraft".

Although initial evaluations had shown the TsKB-55 easy to fly, the tests also revealed some deficiencies, and the initial prototype was modified within a few weeks to become the TsKB-57. The revised first prototype was now a single-seater, and had a new engine as the original 1,370 horsepower Mikulin AM-35 vee-12 engine had not been powerful enough.

Part of the problem was that the AM-35 had a supercharger, which wasn't needed for the low-level operations appropriate for a battlefield support aircraft and actually robbed the engine of power, so it was replaced by a similar 1,680 horsepower AM-38 with no supercharger. Flight trials with the new engine were performed in October 1940, and the aircraft proved much more satisfactory.

In the meantime, the second prototype, designated TsKB-55P, had been completed, flying at the end of the December 1939. As early evaluations of the first prototype had shown that the pilot had a poor forward view over the long inline vee engine, the TsKB-55P featured a lowered engine and a stepped-up cockpit, giving the aircraft a distinctive "humpbacked" look.

The original design concept had been for the aircraft to be armed with four 7.62 millimetre ShKAS machine guns in the wings, but after some experiments the final fit was two 7.62 millimetre ShKAS machine guns and two 20 millimetre ShVAK cannon.

The two prototypes demonstrated the usefulness of the Ilyushin concept, and Soviet factories began to set up for production in early 1941. The production aircraft was designated the Il-2 Sturmovik.

The original Il-2 was a single-seater. The forward fuselage around the engine and cockpit was built with 700 kilograms (1,543 pounds) of steel ranging from 5 to 12 millimetres (a fifth to half inch) thick. The engine radiators were placed behind the engine in the armoured body, while the air intakes were placed on top of the nose. K-4 armour glass was used in the cockpit, with thicknesses from 55 to 65 millimetres (2.2 to 2.6 inches).

The aircraft was a "tailsitter", with wide main undercarriage that was well suited for rough field operations. The main wheels retracted into fairings on the wing, with the tires left exposed. This configuration was partly devised to reduce damage to the aircraft on a "wheels up" landing.

The Il-2 was armed with two ShKAS 7.62 millimetre machine guns and two ShVAK 20 millimetre cannons; rails for eight 82 millimetre RS-82 rockets, making it one of the first attack aircraft to carry rockets; and a bombload of 400 kilograms. There were two small bomb bays in each wing inboard of the landing gear, and there were external racks under the wings as well. Level speed was 470 KPH (300 MPH), and operating altitude was 2,000 meters (6,600 feet).

249 Il-2s were built before the Germans invaded the USSR on 22 June 1941, inflicting a series of unparalleled military disasters on the Red Army. Only 18 Il-2s had been delivered to field units, pilots were not very familiar with the aircraft, and the Il-2 was not in a position to do the German invaders much damage for the time being.

Soviet resistance through the summer of 1941 was uncoordinated and did little to slow the enemy down. By that time, it was obvious that the aircraft factories around Moscow and other centres in western Russia were greatly at risk, and in a monumental undertaking they were relocated beyond the Urals under the most difficult conditions.

Ilyushin and his engineers were busy during this time, rethinking their production techniques, and only two months after the relocation had begun, Il-2s were again coming off the production line. Production was slow to get started, but two production plant managers, Shenkman and Tretiakov, were encouraged to do their utmost by a telegram:

"YOU HAVE LET DOWN OUR COUNTRY AND OUR RED ARMY. YOU HAVE NOT MANUFACTURED IL-2S UNTIL NOW. THE IL-2 AIRCRAFT ARE NECESSARY FOR OUR RED ARMY NOW, LIKE AIR, LIKE BREAD. SHENKMAN BUILDS PRODUCES ONE IL-2 A DAY AND TRETIAKOV BUILDS ONE OR TWO MiG-3s DAILY. IT 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. I WARN YOU FOR THE LAST TIME. STALIN."

With such inducements, production ramped up rapidly. The notion that the Sturmovik was "like bread" became part of the culture of the manufacturing plants. Il-2s became available in quantity, and Red pilots found them an effective weapon.

However, field experience demonstrated serious deficiencies in the aircraft. While the aircraft was easy to fly and had few vices, the 20 millimetre main cannon didn't have enough killing power, and the aircraft was very vulnerable to fighter attacks from above while it was engaged in low-altitude combat. The Ilyushin design team had a meeting with representative operational pilots in the spring of 1942, and decided on a number of improvements.

The improvements were implemented in two steps, the first being the Il-2M, in which the two 20 millimetre ShVAK cannon were replaced with twin high-velocity 23 millimetre VYa cannon, and which incorporated an upgraded AM-38F engine rated at 1,750 HP.

This was quickly followed by the two-seat Il-2M3, in which the cockpit was lengthened to accommodate a gunner, who manually handled a single 12.7 millimetre UBT machine gun, mounted at the back of the cockpit and directed upward and backward. Armour was increased from 700 kilograms to 950 kilograms (2,100 pounds), partly to protect the back-seater.

Despite the heavier armour, performance hardly suffered. The longer cockpit improved the machine's aerodynamics, a slightly improved AM-38F engine provided incremental horsepower, and structural changes trimmed the weight of other parts of the aircraft, resulting in a net gain of only 100 kilograms (220 pounds). With the aircraft's major defects now corrected, the Sturmovik came into its own.

  • Shturmovik on the offence.

    • When the Germans began their drive on Stalingrad on 23 August 1942, Red resistance in the air was almost negligible, and the Luftwaffe pounded the city in major raids with effective impunity.

    As their ground offensive bogged down into savage house-to-house fighting in the city, however, the Soviets were building up their forces for a counterstroke. On 19 November 1942, the Red Army counterattacked in a successful drive to encircle the German 6th Army, supported heavily by artillery, tanks, and over 1,400 aircraft.

    White-painted Sturmovik were the most prominent participant in the battle in the air, performing roughly a thousand sorties over the next four days, skimming in at altitudes of 20 meters (64 feet) or less to smash German armour, artillery, and infantry.

    Weather was so bad during the initial days of the counterattack that the Luftwaffe was unable to respond to the Soviet air onslaught. When the weather cleared on the 24th, German fighters began to respond more effectively, but the Red air fleets kept up the pressure, flying 6,000 sorties over the next week.

    Through December and January, the hammering continued. The Luftwaffe attempted to resupply their encircled troops from the air, but even if there had been no air opposition, there wasn't the airlift capability to do the job, and for the first time in the war the Red Air Force was effectively challenging German air superiority. On 2 February, what remained of the encircled German 6th Army surrendered.

    The Sturmovik had been an important element in the victory, and as fighting continued into the spring of 1943, so did improvements to this vital Soviet weapon.

    Most significantly, in some production, the two 23 millimetre VJa cannon were replaced by a pair of long-barreled 37 millimetre NS-37 cannon, with this variant known as Il-3-37. Each gun had 50 rounds of ammunition. This variant saw service, but it did not prove highly successful as the big guns had a hefty recoil, and also badly affected the aircraft's handling.

    The Il-2M3 was also equipped with other ordnance. One was the PTAB anti-tank bomblet, which was a 2.5 kilogram (5.5 pound) hollow-charge munition. Up to a total 192 PTAB bomblets could be loaded into the Shturmovik's four little bomb bays, and could be scattered over enemy armoured columns. Another weapon was the DAG-10 grenade launcher, an odd "aerial-mine" device that would eject grenades on little parachutes in the path of a pursuer and which Soviet records say was surprisingly effective.

    Many Il-2s also began to incorporate all-metal wings and tail surfaces. These improvements were just in time. During that spring, Hitler had planned an offensive to cut off a huge Soviet salient in German lines, centred around the small city of Kursk. However, the operation, codenamed CITADEL, was postponed until that summer so that the new heavily-armoured Panther and Tiger tanks could participate.

    The Soviets, assisted by a spy codenamed "Lucy" whose network extended high in the German military, were kept perfectly informed of enemy intentions and built their forces in and behind the Kursk salient to high levels. When the Germans attacked on 5 July 1943, the Red Army was ready for them.

    Or, at least, thought they were. They attempted to launch a pre-emptive air strike early that morning, but the Germans quickly sensed the move and sent up their own fighters, destroying 70 Red aircraft at little loss to themselves. Wehrmacht ground units made progress in their attack on the Soviet flanks.

    Within a day, however, the Soviets rallied, and on 7 July, they responded with overwhelming attacks that smashed German panzer divisions. The Sturmoviks were in their element and delivered hammer blows to enemy tanks.

    By this time, Sturmovik pilots had refined their tactics. Flying in attack groups of 8 to 12, in open country they would attack "soft" targets such as infantry or trucks simply skimming in at 5 to 10 meters (16 to 32 feet) altitude. Against stationary "hard" targets such as bunkers they would use near-vertical dive-bombing attacks. Against armour moving in a column, they would proceed straight down the column or weave over it in a shallow S-curve, dropping their PTAB antitank bombs from an altitude of 100 to 150 meters (320 to 480 feet).

    Against armour in offensive formation, however, they preferred the "Circle of Death" attack, in which a Sturmovik group would flank around the enemy and then peel off successively, each Il-2 making a shallow diving attack, then pulling up and around for another pass. The beauty of the Circle of Death was that it kept the enemy under continuous fire for as long as the aircraft had fuel and ammunition.

    One Sturmovik pilot, Senior Lieutenant Alexander Yefinov, wrote: "We usually tried to attack from the rear, where the armour was thinner and where the most vulnerable components of the vehicles were located: the engines and the gas tanks." He proudly added that "the effect was staggering as Hitler's celebrated Tigers burned under the strikes." Il-2M3s armed with 37 millimetre guns were able to destroy Panthers and Tigers with their guns alone, blasting into their thinner top armour.

    The Sturmovik's armour made it generally impervious to anything less than 20 millimetre fire. Even that had to be accurate and precise to do the aircraft damage, and an Il-2 moving fast and jinking wildly at low altitude was a difficult target.

    Despite their survivability, Sturmovik losses were high, for they fought in the teeth of the worst combat with no place to hide. Soviet factories continued churn out the simple, reliable aircraft, and those that fell were quickly replaced with new aircraft with weaknesses eliminated. Red pilots refined their tactics and training to help reduce the losses.

    The Kursk salient became a storm of combat, but on 13 July, Hitler, confronted with the Anglo-American invasion of Sicily, called off CITADEL.

    The Battle of Kursk was a significant Soviet victory, and would soon lead to rolling back the Germans all along the Russian front. The Sturmovik had been a significant contributor to the success of Red arms. Il-2s destroyed 70 tanks of the 9th Panzer Division in a mere 20 minutes, inflicted losses of 2,000 men and 270 tanks in two hours of attack on the 3rd Panzer Division, and effectively destroyed the 17th Panzer Division in four hours of strikes, smashing 240 vehicles out of their total of almost 300.

    At the end of 1943, most of Russia was back in Soviet hands. Only Belorussia remained under German occupation. To dislodge them, Stalin and his generals planned a massive offensive under the code name BAGRATION, after a Czarist general of the Napoleanic wars.

    BAGRATION jumped off on 22 June 1944, the third anniversary of the German invasion. More than 6,000 planes participated, with a third of them Shturmoviks. Yefinov wrote: "With precise, low-altitude strikes, they completely destroyed the fascists' concrete emplacements, smoked them out of their concrete pillboxes and, with cannon, rocket and machine-gun fire, destroyed Hitler's soldiers."

    By this time, the Sturmovik's arsenal had been upgraded still further, with the 132 millimetre RS-132 rocket providing greater firepower than the older RS-82 weapon. The new rockets carried either a shaped-charge warhead for attacking armour, or a high-explosive warhead for strikes on buildings and fortifications.

    By 4 July, the operation was over except for the mopping up. German Army Group Centre had taken 300,000 casualties and had been effectively destroyed. The Germans had been driven out of the USSR, and now the Soviet war machine was ready to drive into Eastern Europe in pursuit.

    Once again, the Il-2 had been a critical weapon in the victory. To Sturmovik pilots, the aircraft was simply the feminine "Ilyusha". To the soldiers on the ground it was the "Hunchback", or the "Flying Tank", or, the greatest of compliments, the "Flying Infantryman". To the enemy, it was "Schwarz Tod", the Black Death.

  • The Il-10 - Zenith of the Shturmovik

    • In 1943, Ilyushin and his engineers had considered what they could do to improve on the Il-2 by redesigning it essentially from scratch. The result was the Il-10, which looked very much like a cleaned-up Il-2, but was of all-metal construction, gave the rear gunner a powered turret with a single 20 millimetre gun instead of the flexible 12.7 millimetre gun, and had such aerodynamic features as main wheels that rotated 90 degrees to fit inside the wheel fairings.

    There were only two bomb bays instead of four. Postwar production would also have four 23 millimetre cannon, instead of two 7.62 millimetre machine guns and two 23 millimetre cannon. Il-10s began reaching combat units in October 1944, joining the tens of thousands of Il-2s already in service, in preparation for the last drive on Hitler's Reich.

    After the fall of Warsaw on 17 January 1945, the final push on Germany began on 16 April 1945, as the Red Army crossed the Oder and Neisse rivers, the last major geographic obstacles in front of Berlin. In the northern sector of the battle zone, where the seacoast terrain was littered with swamps, armour and artillery were useless, and the Sturmovik was the only means of tactical support.

    An Il-2 pilot wrote: "The ground air controllers provided us with precise coordinates of where the strikes should be delivered. At other times, our missions were provided after we were already airborne and 5-10 minutes later fire rained down on the enemy, destroying his men and equipment." Eventually, "things reached a point where, after expending all our ammunition - bombs, shells, rockets, and machine-gun belts - we continued to fly over the battlefield at low altitudes, sowing panic and fear."

    The Red Army pressed into Berlin in bitter house-to-house fighting. On 30 April, Adolf Hitler committed suicide, and on 1 May the Germans surrendered. With the defeat of Germany, the era of the Sturmovik was over. The Il-10 would be later used in the Korean war, but by that time it would be more of a flying coffin than a flying tank, and its usage would fade away in the 1950s.

    During the Great Patriotic War against the Germans, the Shturmovik operated in a number of unusual roles besides close-support aircraft, such as reconnaissance, smoke laying, and even some transport work. Sometimes transport work was an improvised matter. Sturmovik pilots were reported to have rescued colleagues whose aircraft had gone down by lashing them to the landing gear and making the trip home with their gear down.

    The Sturmovik may have been the only Soviet aircraft to operate in joint combat with American aircraft. On 8 May 1945, four American Lockheed P-38 Lightnings joined two squadrons of Il-2M3s over Austria in an attack on a German road column.

    The Soviet Navy flew many Il-2s, using them to perform "mast-top bombing", which was the same as the American "skip bombing" technique, coming in at low level and skipping a delayed-action bomb off the waves into the side of a ship. The Navy also flew a land-based torpedo bomber variant under the designation Il-2T.

    There were a number of other minor variants of the Sturmovik. The Il-2KR was intended as a battlefield spotting and reconnaissance aircraft, and had a more powerful radio and a camera. There was a dual-control conversion trainer, the Il-2U.

    Sergei Ilyushin also designed a scaled-up version of the Il-2 designated the Il-8, but after test flights in the fall of 1944, the bigger aircraft's performance proved unsatisfactory, and the project was abandoned.

    Another interesting dead-end variant was the Il-2I armoured fighter. This variant returned to the single-seat format, with the bomb bays and the two 7.62 millimetre machine guns removed, leaving the two 23 millimetre guns for air combat. External bomb racks were retained. Trials demonstrated that the idea wasn't as useful in practice as it sounded in theory, and the armoured fighter was abandoned.

    Many Sturmovik pilots performed heroic deeds in their fight for the Motherland, and several were awarded decorations as Heroes of the Soviet Union. One pilot named Briuhanov flew 140 combat missions, destroying 40 tanks, 3 self-propelled guns, a train, 152 other ground vehicles, 20 mortar emplacements, and 34 antiaircraft positions. He was killed in the last month of the war in Europe.

    While the Soviets had all-female aircraft regiments, there were no such formations of Sturmoviks. Nonetheless, women did fly the Il-2 in combat. The most famous of them was Senior Lieutenant Anna Yegorova, who flew 260 missions and was decorated three times, the last posthumously, for she was shot down and presumed dead. However, though she was severely mistreated by her German captors, she did in fact survive to be liberated. Pictures show her to be striking and photogenic. Besides being a good fighter, she was likely a useful instrument for the energetic Red propaganda machine.

    Total production of the Sturmovik was over 36,000 Il-2s of all makes and some 6,000 Il-10s, a total of over 42,000, making it one of the most heavily produced aircraft in history. Its pre-eminence in its role is indicated by the fact that the term "Sturmovik", or "Storm Bird", is a general Soviet designation for an attack aircraft, but came to be uniquely descriptive of the Il-2.

    American World War I fighter ace Eddie Rickenbacker was shown a demonstration of the Shturmovik during a visit to the USSR, leaving him extremely impressed. He reported it the best attack aircraft in existence that the USA had never built anything like it, and that such a machine should be part of every army.

    Variants

    • TsKB-55 : Two-seat prototype.
    • BSh-2 : VVS designation for TsKB-55 prototype.
    • TsKB-57 : Single-seat prototype.
    • Il-2I : Armoured fighter, prototype only.
    • Il-2 : Single-seat production model powered by AM-38 engine.
    • Il-2M : Two-seat production model, 20 mm ShVAK cannons replaced with 23 mm VYa cannons, powered by uprated AM-38F engine.
    • Il-2M3 (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 UIl-2.

    — — — = = — — —

    This text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License
    Source : Article Iliouchine Il-2 of Wikipedia ( authors )

    Specifications (Il-2M3)

    • Crew : 2 (Pilote and gunner).
    • Length : 11.6 m (or 38 ft 1 in).
    • Height : 4.2 m (or 13 ft 9 in).
    • Wingspan : 14.6 m (or 47 ft 11 in).
    • Wing area : 38.5 m² (or 414 sq ft).
    • Empty weight : 4,360 kg (or 9,610 lb).
    • Loaded weight : 6,160 kg (or 13,580 lb).
    • Maximum speed : 414 km/h (or 257 mph).
    • Range : 720 km (or 450 mi).
    • Service ceiling : 5,500 m (or 18,000 ft).
    • Rate of climb : 10.4 m/s (or 2050 ft/min).
    • Wing loading : 160 kg/m² (or 31.3 lb/ft²).
    • Powerplant : One Mikulin AM-38F liquid-cooled V-12.
    • Power : 1,285 kW (or 1,720 hp).
    • Armament : Two fixed forward-firing 23 mm VYa-23 cannons, 150 rounds/gun. Two fixed forward-firing 7.62 mm ShKAS machine guns, 750 rounds/gun. One manually aimed 12.7 mm Berezin UBT machine gun the in rear cockpit, 150 rounds. Up to 600 kg (1,320 lb) of bombs and/or 4x RS-82 or RS-132 rockets.

    — — — = = — — —

    This text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License
    Source : Article Iliouchine Il-2 of Wikipedia ( authors )
    Ilyushin Il-2 Sturmovik : Your comments on this subject
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    Website layout

    Left menus

    Because of the lack of space on smartphones and small tablets, these menus are hidden. Everything is nevertheless accessible via the main menu option, located between the video and photo sections. This menu is placed there for compatibility reasons with some browsers, which play the videos over the menus.

    "Search" and "Latest" :
    The link "In Titles" restricts the search to the titles of different forms. Use this option if you are looking for a plane, a constructor, a pilot or a particular event that could have been treated as a subject.

    The link "In Stories" will bring you to a search in all texts (the "Story" tab) and will take more time. The search term will appear highlighted in green when opening the corresponding story.

    Would you believe, "Timeline" will show all subjects in chronological order.

    "Random" will reload the entire page with a new random topic.

    The bottom section keeps you abreast of the latest five entries. New topics are added regularly. Don't hesitate to come visit us often : add bookmark.

    Blogs and Comments central section

    Under the photos section comes the comments tabs window :

    You can enter general comments in your own language via one of the two buttons on the left (BLOG EN and BLOG FR). Note that these buttons are accessible regardless of the language to allow some participation in the other language.

    All comments are subject to moderation and will be published only if they comply with the basic rules of decorum, while remaining relevant to the purpose of this site.

    The third tab allows you to enter comments on the shown topic and is bilingual. Personal anecdotes, supplements and other information questions will take place here.

    The "Story" tab shows the explanatory texts. They are most often taken from Wikipedia, a site where we participate regularly.

    The "Data" tab is reserved for list of features and specifications.

    Right menus

    On a smartphone, the lack of space is growing and this menu is moved to the bottom of the page to give priority to videos and pictures.

    The top right icons are links to videos posted by third parties (on their own responsabilities) or by ourselves. The link below these icons will take you to the channel of the one who posted the video. Feel free to suggest other videos if you think they are of some interest (Use the BLOG button or the "Contact" link).