IL-2 is rightly one of the most famous aircraft of the Great Patriotic War. A huge number of people know about it, having even the most remote idea of aviation. For the inhabitants of our country, this attack aircraft is on a par with the T-34 tank, "Katyusha", "lorry", submachine gun PPSh, identifying the weapon of Victory. At the same time, even 75 years after the end of the war, the legendary Soviet attack aircraft, who fought from 1941 to 1945, is surrounded by a number of persistent myths.
The place of the air gunner on the Il-2 was the place of the doomed
It is absolutely possible to say that the Il-2 has become the most massive combat aircraft in the history of aviation. The total production of attack aircraft exceeded 36 thousand units. This aircraft was actively used in battles in all theaters of military operations of the Great Patriotic War, as well as in the Soviet-Japanese War. In total, for the period from 1941 to 1945, the combat losses of Il-2 attack aircraft amounted to 11,448 vehicles. Contrary to many beliefs, this is about half of all losses, a little more than 11 thousand aircraft were written off as non-combat losses (lost as a result of accidents, accidents, wear and tear of material parts). Throughout the war, the losses of the attack aircraft flight personnel are estimated at 12,054 people, including 7837 pilots, 221 - an observer pilot, 3996 - air gunners.
Judging by the figures of official losses indicated in his books by Oleg Valentinovich Rastrenin, Candidate of Historical Sciences, a well-known expert on the Il-2 aircraft, the very first myth that the place of the air gunner on the Il-2 was the place of a penalty box is easily debunked. there weren't many. Indeed, many attack aircraft were converted into a two-seater version even at the front, literally in artisanal conditions, using everything that was at hand, and there was simply no question of any protection for the air gunner. But the serial two-seater versions of the Il-2 did not have an armored cockpit for the air gunner, the only protection of which was an armored plate 6 mm thick, which protected him from fire from the tail of the aircraft. Despite this, according to official figures, the losses of air gunners were less than the deaths of pilots.
Most likely, this is due to the fact that by the time serial two-seat attack aircraft entered the troops en masse, the Ilys flew on combat missions accompanied by fighters. Such cover did not save the attack aircraft from meeting enemy fighters, but the "flying tanks" received additional protection and support. At the same time, the losses of Il-2 aircraft from anti-aircraft artillery fire from the ground constantly grew until the end of the war, and from attacks by enemy fighters - they fell. The probability of dying from anti-aircraft fire for the pilot and the gunner, apparently, was approximately equal.
Against the background of the losses of the flight personnel of the assault aviation, it is even a little offensive for the fact that the image of a hero pilot has formed in the mass consciousness, primarily a fighter pilot with his own list of aerial victories. At the same time, attack pilots and bombers were undeservedly relegated to the background. At the same time, the people who flew the IL-2 acted primarily in the interests of the ground forces. Often the success of the ground operation and the breakthrough of the enemy's defense depended on their competent actions. At the same time, attacks on protected targets and targets located on the front line were associated with a serious risk for the crews of attack aircraft, which were often met by massive anti-aircraft artillery fire, as well as all types of small arms. At the same time, attack aircraft faced enemy fighters. Each combat sortie on the Il-2 was fraught with considerable risk. Therefore, all the pilots and air gunners who fought on the famous attack aircraft are a priori heroes who risked their lives every flight.
IL-2 armor did not make the plane invulnerable
Today the IL-2 is familiar to many by the nickname “flying tank”. Some Soviet authors argued that Wehrmacht soldiers called Soviet attack aircraft "black death" or "plague", and Luftwaffe fighter pilots called the Il-2 "concrete aircraft". Many of these nicknames were attached to the plane after the end of the Great Patriotic War, it is very difficult to verify the veracity of their appearance and circulation. At the same time, the plane was really called a "flying tank". So Sergei Vladimirovich Ilyushin wrote to the Air Force Research Institute about the need to create an armored attack aircraft or, in other words, a "flying tank".
In reality, of course, there was no Il-2 tank. It was an armored attack aircraft, which surpassed all Soviet aircraft in terms of protection. The attack aircraft looked especially advantageous against the background of fighters, which in 1941 were forced to be used for attacking German units. At the same time, not all elements were armored on the Il-2. The weight of the armored parts on the attack aircraft was estimated at about 950 kg, which was 15.6 percent of the total flight weight of the aircraft. This is a decent value, but it did not make the plane and pilot immune to ground fire and air attacks.
Real hostilities and field tests carried out showed that the armor of the attack aircraft did not protect the aircraft components and the crew from the fire of 37, 30 and 20-mm shells of German artillery systems, both anti-aircraft and aircraft cannons. Moreover, the armor was also vulnerable to large-caliber 13-mm aircraft machine guns. A direct hit of such ammunition almost always ended with the penetration of the attack aircraft's armor, followed by the defeat of the aircraft crew and engine parts. The armor fully protected the crew and important components of the aircraft only from bullets of normal caliber, as well as most fragments of anti-aircraft shells, which did not penetrate the armor, leaving only traces on it in the form of dents.
At the same time, the combat survivability system adopted and implemented on the Il-2 attack aircraft, based on an armored hull, which covered the pilot and vital parts of the attack aircraft, a protector on gas tanks and a system for filling gas tanks with neutral gases, was evaluated by aviation specialists in a positive way. The implemented measures undoubtedly played a role in the combat situation, more than once saving the plane and the crew from death. But in full measure, such protection did not meet the requirements of the unfolding war.
The Flying Tank was half wooden
Speaking of the Il-2 attack aircraft, one should not forget that it was not even an all-metal aircraft. Many structural elements of the famous "flying tank" were made of wood. The first fully all-metal Soviet attack aircraft that went into mass production at the end of World War II was the Il-10, which was the product of a deep modernization of the two-seat version of the Il-2 attack aircraft. This version received not only an all-metal hull, but also improved booking, including a fully armored air gunner's cabin, in fact, and thus becoming an attack aircraft, which was originally conceived by Sergei Ilyushin.
At the same time, the Il-2 attack aircraft, which fought on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War, were aircraft of a mixed design. The entire rear of the aircraft was a wooden monocoque with a working skin, in the manufacture of which were used birch veneer and plywood. The keel of the vertical tail was also made of wood. At the same time, during the war years, some of the Il-2 attack aircraft were produced with wooden wing consoles, which did not add survivability to the vehicle. This was a forced measure due to the loss of important aluminum plants and a general shortage of rolled aluminum. Used in the design of the IL-2 aircraft and the canvas.
In general, experts note that the design of even mixed-design attack aircraft was originally designed to withstand a large amount of damage in combat conditions. The simplicity of the design turned out to be no less important. The aircraft was simple to manufacture and operate, including repairs directly in the field. All this ensured the high maintainability of the machines, as well as the possibility of mass production under the conditions of using the labor of low-skilled workers.
The Ilyushin Design Bureau provided the aircraft with such a margin of safety, which made it possible to withstand not only the use of low-quality materials in difficult wartime conditions, but also the use of unskilled labor during assembly. With all this, the plane flew and smashed the enemy. The IL-2 could be produced in mass quantities, and its massive use at the front, multiplied by the gradual development of combat tactics, gave the Red Army a much needed result on the battlefield.
Abstract military did not ask Ilyushin to make the plane one-seater
There is a widespread belief that the idea to create a single-seat version of the Il-2 attack aircraft came from the military. That such a decision became erroneous and led to catastrophic losses of attack aircraft, especially in the first year of the war, when they often became victims of attacks by German fighters attacking silts flying without fighter cover, which were completely defenseless against the enemy from the rear hemisphere.
In fact, this is a persistent myth, in which Stalin personally, who called Ilyushin for the sake of this, comes up with the idea of abandoning the onboard gunner, or some abstract military who demanded that Ilyushin produce a single-seat version of the attack aircraft. In fact, the idea of building a single-seat version of the attack aircraft, which in the future will become the Il-2, came directly from the Ilyushin Design Bureau. Initially, the military wanted to get exactly the two-seater version of the attack aircraft with an onboard gunner. However, the aircraft realized by Ilyushin did not fit into the tactical and technical requirements of the military.
It was with this that the emergence of a single-seat version of the Il-2 was connected. Ilyushin tried in a short time to present an aircraft that would fit into the tactical and technical requirements put forward by the Air Force. It so happened that the designer managed to achieve this only in a single version. At the same time, the military was entirely in favor of the two-seater version of the attack aircraft, but only if it would meet the requirements for a combat vehicle. They did not abandon such an aircraft until the last.
Thus, Ilyushin himself was the initiator of the alteration of the aircraft. But this measure was forced. The modified aircraft was distinguished by a reduced armored capsule, and an additional fuel tank appeared in the place where the shooter used to sit. These solutions made it possible to reduce the weight of the aircraft and improve the flight characteristics of the aircraft, which made it possible to fit into the requirements of the military. At the same time, the cockpit was raised relative to the engine in order to improve its visibility. The resulting aircraft acquired a recognizable and characteristic profile for Il-2 attack aircraft, for which the troops affectionately nicknamed the aircraft "humpbacked". On the one hand, the decision to get rid of the shooter cost hundreds of pilots' lives in the difficult months of 1941, on the other hand, the Red Army Air Force, in principle, was able to get a new attack aircraft, which they needed not today, but yesterday.
IL-2 was not a tank killer
The myth that the Il-2 attack aircraft was a real threat to German tanks is very persistent. This is often spoken about both by ordinary people and by high-ranking Soviet military leaders in their memoirs, although memoirs are a separate genre of military literature. For example, Marshal Konev is often credited with saying that if the Il-2 hits a tank with an "eres", it will turn over. As you can imagine, regardless of whether Konev once said this, in reality it was not at all like that. Even a direct hit of rockets into the tank did not guarantee the destruction of the combat vehicle, and the very probability of hitting the tank was even lower.
The Il-2 practically could not fight tanks even during the initial period of World War II. The effectiveness of his 20-mm ShVAK cannons, and then the 23-mm VYa cannons, was not enough to penetrate the side armor of even light German tanks. In fact, armor-piercing shells could hit German tanks only in the roof of the turret or engine compartment, but only during dive attacks, to which the Il-2, unlike the main tactical aircraft of the Luftwaffe, the Ju-87 dive bomber, was not adapted.
The main method of attacking ground targets for the IL-2 was a gentle dive and low-level attack. With this attack mode, the armor penetration of the aircraft guns was not enough, and it was difficult to effectively drop the bombs, since the maximum bombing accuracy was achieved only with a dive. At the same time, the IL-2 lacked good sights for bombing throughout the war. The sighting devices of the attack aircraft included a simple mechanical sight with markings on the windshield and a front sight on the engine's armored hood, as well as markings and targeting pins on the armored hood. At the same time, the pilot also had a rather limited view from the cockpit forward and downward, as well as to the sides. When attacking ground targets, the massive nose of the aircraft very quickly blocked the pilot's entire view. For these reasons, the Il-2 attack aircraft was far from the best machine for attacking small targets.
The situation was partly saved by the appearance of more powerful 132-mm ROFS-132 rockets with improved accuracy of fire, the hit of which in the engine part of a tank or self-propelled gun could lead to the loss of a combat vehicle, as well as new small cumulative ammunition - anti-tank aerial bombs PTAB-2, 5 -1, 5. The bomb was loaded into containers of 48 pieces, while the IL-2 could easily take four such containers. The first application of PTAB at the Kursk Bulge was very successful. When dropping bombs, they easily covered an area measuring 15 by 200 meters. Such ammunition was very effective against accumulations of equipment, for example, on the march or in places of concentration. However, over time, the Germans began to spread out tanks, cover them under trees, pull on special nets and use other methods of protection.
With all this, it cannot be said that the Il-2 did not fulfill its role on the battlefield. Even as he did it, it was just that his main prey was far from tanks. The aircraft did an excellent job of covering areal targets, and mass production allowed the use of attack aircraft in large numbers. The Il-2 was especially effective in attacks against unprotected and weakly protected targets: vehicles, armored personnel carriers, artillery and mortar batteries, enemy manpower.
Best of all, attack aircraft acted against columns of enemy equipment on the march and stationary artillery positions. In such cases, during an attack, a certain amount of ammunition was guaranteed to find targets. This was especially important at the first stage of the Great Patriotic War, when the Germans made extensive use of their mechanized units. Any slowdown in the movement of enemy columns during air raids, even with insignificant losses for the enemy, played into the hands of the Red Army, which was gaining time.
