Ilyushin Il-2 Shturmovik
The Ilyushin Il-2 Shturmovik was a Soviet armored ground-attack aircraft of the Second World War. Built around a steel armored shell that protected its crew, engine and fuel, it attacked German armor and troops at low level on the Eastern Front and was produced in larger numbers, over 36,000, than any other military aircraft in history. Few survive today; examples are preserved in museums in Europe and the United States, and one flies in Washington State.
Why It Mattered
The Ilyushin Il-2 was the Soviet Union's standard ground-attack aircraft of the Second World War, and it was built in larger numbers than any other military aircraft in history. Designed shortly before the war as a heavily armored low-level attack aircraft, it became the Red Army's principal close-support weapon on the Eastern Front, and it came to symbolize the Soviet emphasis on ground-attack aviation in support of ground forces. The Soviet leadership treated its production as a national priority; Stalin himself characterized the aircraft as necessary to the Red Army like air and bread. Soviet factories had built 36,163 of them by November 1944.
Design Notes
Ilyushin's designers began work in 1938 on an attack aircraft built around armor. A steel shell of some 1,540 pounds enclosed the pilot, engine, radiators and fuel tank, and armor up to 12 mm thick protected the engine and cockpit, while the rear fuselage was plywood. Armament entering production in 1940 was two wing-mounted armor-piercing cannon and two machine guns, with eight rockets and 400 kilograms of bombs. The armor's weight was the design's standing compromise, and it meant the aircraft could not carry heavy bomb loads. The type was designed with a rear gunner, but the position was deleted before large-scale production and reinstated in 1942.
Operational History
When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Soviet air forces had only 249 Il-2s in service. Aircraft factories were evacuated east of the Ural Mountains that year, and production resumed at first in the open air, in winter, while laborers erected factory walls and roofs around the assembly lines. In service, Shturmoviks attacked German armor, artillery, transport and troops in support of Soviet ground operations from the defense of Moscow to the Battle of Berlin. Early tactics skimmed the ground, but attacks were later made from about 6,000 feet, formations circling down in a 20-degree dive. Against tanks, the type's most effective weapon was a 5.5-pound anti-tank bomblet with a shaped warhead, dropped in massive quantities onto the thin upper armor of tanks. Losses were extremely high, above all to German fighters, even after a rear gun was added for self-defense, and German troops called the aircraft the "Black Death." The danger was formally recognized: Il-2 pilots received the Hero of the Soviet Union after only 10 missions, an award that normally required 100. Yet the aircraft's armor made it hard to kill, and half of all Shturmoviks that returned safely from missions had combat damage, most of it repairable.
Afterlife
More than 36,000 Il-2s were built in all; one published count puts the total at 36,163. After the war, many were exported to the Soviet Union's new satellite states, including Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Mongolia and Yugoslavia, and NATO gave the type the reporting name "Bark." The Il-2 also led to the development of the improved Il-10, which served in the latter stages of the war and in the Korean War. Survivors are few for so numerous a type: a number are preserved in museums in Eastern Europe, and three examples reached the United States after 1991. One of them now flies again: the Everett, Washington-based Flying Heritage and Combat Armor Museum restored it to airworthiness, and it flies with an Allison V-1710 in place of the original Mikulin AM-38 engine. Another is on static display at the Pima Air and Space Museum in Tucson, Arizona, and the Smithsonian's example is now on display in Washington, DC.