One of the first 1940 photographs of the Il-2 show it equipped with two MP-6 23 mm autocannons developed by Yakov Taubin ( Яков Таубин) at OKB-16. The 23 mm (0.91 in) armament of Il-2 was subject to a competition. Deliveries to operational units commenced in May 1941. The production aircraft passed State Acceptance Trials in March 1941, and was redesignated Il-2 in April. The TsKB-57 first flew on 12 October 1940. Because of this it was redesigned as the TsKB-57, a lighter single-seat design, with the more powerful 1,254 kW (1,682 hp) Mikulin AM-38 engine, a development of the AM-35 optimised for low level operation. The BSh-2 was overweight and underpowered, with the original Mikulin AM-35 1,022 kW (1,371 hp) engine designed to give its greatest power outputs at high altitude. The prototypes – TsKB-55 and TskB-57 – were built at Moscow plant #39, at that time the Ilyushin design bureau's base. The prototype TsKB-55, which first flew on 2 October 1939, won the government competition against the Sukhoi Su-6 and received the VVS designation BSh-2 (the BSh stood for " Bronirovani Shturmovik" or armoured ground attack). Uniquely for a World War II attack aircraft, and similarly to the forward fuselage design of the World War I-era Imperial German Junkers J.I armored, all-metal biplane, the Il-2's armor was designed as a load-bearing part of the Ilyushin's monocoque structure, thus saving considerable weight. Standing loaded, the Ilyushin weighed more than 4,700 kg (10,400 lb), making the armoured shell about 15% of the aircraft's gross weight. TsKB-55 was a two-seat aircraft with an armoured shell weighing 700 kg (1,500 lb), protecting crew, engine, radiators, and the fuel tank. The Il-2 was designed by Sergey Ilyushin and his team at the Central Design Bureau in 1938. However, Soviet engines at the time lacked the power needed to provide the heavy aircraft with good performance. 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. When factories fell behind on deliveries, Joseph Stalin told the factory managers that the Il-2s were "as essential to the Red Army as air and bread." The Il-2 aircraft played a crucial role on the Eastern Front. Its postwar NATO reporting name was " Bark". To the soldiers on the ground, it was the "Hunchback", the "Flying Tank" or the "Flying Infantryman". To Il-2 pilots, the aircraft was simply the diminutive "Ilyusha". The word also appears in Western sources as Stormovik and Sturmovik, neither of which give correct pronunciation in English.ĭuring the war, 36,183 units of the Il-2 were produced, and in combination with its successor, the Ilyushin Il-10, a total of 42,330 were built, making it the single most produced military aircraft design in aviation history, as well as one of the most produced piloted aircraft in history along with the American postwar civilian Cessna 172 and the Soviet Union's own then-contemporary Polikarpov Po-2 Kukuruznik multipurpose biplane.
The Il-2 was never given an official name and 'shturmovik' is the generic Russian word meaning ground attack aircraft. The Ilyushin Il-2 ( Cyrillic: Илью́шин Ил-2) Shturmovik ( Cyrillic: Штурмови́к, Shturmovík) is a ground-attack aircraft produced by the Soviet Union in large numbers during the Second World War.
0 kommentar(er)
