The Ilyushin Il-2 is a ground-attack plane that was produced by the Soviet Union in large numbers during the Second World War. The word shturmovík, the generic Russian term for a ground-attack aircraft, became a synecdoche for the Il-2 in English sources, where it is commonly rendered Shturmovik, Stormovik[3] and Sturmovik.
To Il-2 pilots, the aircraft was known by the diminutive “Ilyusha”. To the soldiers on the ground, it was called the “Hunchback”, the “Flying Tank” or the “Flying Infantryman”.
During 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.
The Il-2 played a crucial role on the Eastern Front. 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 is a single-engine, propeller-driven, low-wing monoplane of mixed construction with a crew of two (one in early versions), specially designed for assault operations. Its most notable feature was the inclusion of armor in an airframe load-bearing scheme. Armor plates replaced the frame and paneling throughout the nacelle and middle part of the fuselage, and an armored hull made of riveted homogeneous armor steel AB-1 secured the aircraft’s engine, cockpit, water and oil radiators, and fuel tanks.
General characteristics
Crew: 2
Length: 11.65 m (38 ft 3 in)
Wingspan: 14.60 m (47 ft 11 in)
Height: 4.17 m (13 ft 8 in) (tail up)
Empty weight: 4,425 kg (9,755 lb)
Max takeoff weight: 6,360 kg (14,021 lb)
Powerplant: 1 × Mikulin AM-38F liquid-cooled V12 engine, 1,280 kW (1,720 hp) (takeoff power),1,100 kW (1,500 hp) at 750 m (2,460 ft)
Propellers: 3-bladed AV-57-158 variable-pitch propeller, 3.60 m (11 ft 10 in) diameter
Performance
Maximum speed: 410 km/h (250 mph, 220 kn) at 1,500 m (4,900 ft)
Range: 765 km (475 mi, 413 nmi) at 275 km/h (171 mph; 148 kn) and 1,000 m (3,300 ft)
Service ceiling: 4,525 m (14,846 ft) (service ceiling), 6,360 m (20,870 ft) (absolute ceiling)
Armament
Guns:
2 × fixed forward-firing 23×152mm VYa-23 cannons, 150 rounds per gun
2 × fixed forward-firing 7.62×54mmR ShKAS machine guns, 750 rounds per gun
1 × manually aimed 12.7×108mm Berezin UBT machine gun in rear cockpit, 300 rounds
Rockets:
8× RS-82 rockets or
4× RS-132 rockets
Bombs:
6× 100 kg (220 lb) bombs in wing bomb-bays and underwing or
4× dispensers for 48 2.5 kg (5.5 lb) PTAB anti-armour bombs (192 total) in wing bays