Il-2 - our proud or tragic error?

V.Bakursky
Role
played by Il-2 in the Great Patriotic War is hard to overestimate. But at recent time some sentences appear in the press where Il-2 is presented as a ... terrible error of soviet aviation industry, "flying coffin" - perfect target for German aces which costs tens of thousands lives of soviet pilots and gunners.
Indeed, for many years Il-2 was presented by our press as the best and the most produced WWII aircraft, and any critics appeared to be a heresy. Now our "experts" fell into an opposite extreme... For example, newspaper "The Beginning" published exactly the next : "Soviet stormovik Il-2 gave up to German Junkers Ju-87 'Stuka' factor 1.5 in ceiling, factor 4 in range, factor 3 in bomb load, advancing only in gun firepower... by 1 machine gun. Briefly, famous Il-2 was cheap, primitive and bad aircraft. It was a plane for a death squad. Average survivability, as proved by practices, was only 5 combat missions." Such an opinion. It is unclear, indeed, why author started from comparison of aircrafts from different classes - ground attacker and dive bomber. And moreover - where he got all those numbers?
Comment by A.Savin :
Il-2 vs 'Stuka'
Il-2type3 Ju-87b1 (1938) Ju-87g1(1942)
Range 740 600km 320km
Speed 404km.h 358km/h 314km/h
Bombs 400kg internal
200kg external		 700kg none
Machine guns 2x7.62mm
1x12.7mm		 3x7.9mm 1x7.9mm
Cannons 2x23mm
or 2x37mm		 none 2x30mm
Rockets 8xRS-82
or 4xRS-132		 none none
According to Il-2 item, "Il-2 in Action", and Gustin's Military Aircraft Database;
Statistics is a tough thing, and it confirms that for every lost Il-2 there were in average 30 combat missions. Including heavy losses in the early period of war, when German fighters could practice shooting on single-seat Il's which had no defence weapons and practically no fighter escorts.
Single-seat Il-2 crashed. Often the only way to bring down one of these aircraft was to shoot off the ailerons, elevators or rudder, since the pilot and engine were invulnerable to machine gun fire.
Photo Almark from 'Ground attack' by Christopher Chant (47k);
Same way many other soviet planes were doomed, including SB, R-5, TB-3, and others. But in the second half of Great Patriotic War Soviet (and Allied - A.S.) aviation took over domination in air from Germany, and Il-2 started to operate with escort fighters. Pilots-stormoviks learned effective defence maneuver called 'circle'. (Stormoviks form circle protecting tail of previous aircraft, and their powerful guns are ready to welcome fighters from any direction.) As a result Il-2 losses became much smaller.
Losses from German front line anti-aircraft fire were also significant, but German front line air are known to be extremely strong, and any other aircraft should be much more vulnerable under those circumstances.
There is a reasonable question: why Allied Forces on the West Front had low losses and high efficiency despite they used just heavy fighters "Thunderbolt". May be this aircraft was more efficient that armored Il-2? Indeed, no. The reason is that active use of "Thunderbolts" as an attack aircraft begins in 1944, when German front line aviation was almost paralyzed, and air defence interceptors were busy with defeating "Flying Fortresses". Plus main target of Allied Forces attackers was not on front line but deep behind enemy lines (thanks to range of US fighters - A.S.), where they hunted trains and automotive escorts.
Indeed, such a targets could not be protected by strong anti-aircraft defence. In case of front line operations losses of Thunderbolts could be much heavier, because armour of Il-2 protected pilot and engine from shrapnel and bullets.
Situation with gunner's protection was much worse. Gunner in Il-2 (see history of the problem in 'Special Class' - AS) was not protected by armored cockpit, and for every pilot casualty there were about 7 killed gunners... (may be this is a legend, but some Gulag prisoners volunteered to serve as Il-2 gunners in exchange for chance to get freedom - AS). This problem was solved only on seriously modified Il-10 with both crew members sharing common armored cockpit.
Other "experts" mention liquid cooling engine of Il-2 as its disadvantage, because it required additional armoring. Now, as late as 50 years they blame S.V.Ilyushinthat he did not employed more combat-robust air-cooling engine. Good idea, but was such an engine available at the moment? When Il-2 was under development, there vere no such engines available to supply sufficient power. Only low-altitude AM-38 could give a chance to the Il-2. It is not surprising that more advanced Sukhoi Su-6 with M-71 engine did not reach mass production - the M-71 (ASh-71) engine was available only as an experimental. Of course S.V.Ilyushin understood significance of power plant "survivability", but he had no alternative "proper" solutions.
S.V.Ilyushin developed and flight tested the Il-2M-82, (also designated Il-4) with M-82 14-cylinder 2-raw engine, but it has almost identical performance. (A.Savine)
I guess many of you had chance to listen that Il-2 was heavy and clumsy, so it suffered big losses. Yes it was, but it was not a fighter but ground attacker (take for comparison Fairchild A-10, this plane was designed following exactly the same concept ! - A.S.). Nobody will blame Pe-2 or Il-4 that they were not as maneuverable as Messerschmitt was. Stormovik as well as a bomber must be capable for destruction of ground targets, and its protection from enemy fighters is a duty of escort fighters.
It is not a guilt but trouble of our stormovik pilots that up to the middle of the war they had to operate without fighter protection. And where young pilots could get experience of defensive air combat tactics when they just started to fly under cut training program ? Some of them came to action with only 10 flight hours on stormovik...
This was a cause of simplified attack tactics - small angle dive on target, what made aircraft a good target for concentrated anti-aircraft fire. One more reason for heavy losses...
But Il-2 itself was not such an "iron" as one can imagine. Experienced pilots could perform complex "figures" on Il-2 and were quite successful in defence combat alone face-to-face with enemy fighters.
Moreover, test photo-combats proved that on low altitude Il-2 was capable to defeat such a maneuverable fighters as Yak-3. Concerning the more powerful and advanced Il-10, on low altitude it was not only as maneuverable as a fighter but also as fast as a fighter. Unfortunately stormovik pilots in mass were not specially trained for active air-air combat...
Few words about Il-2 armament. Unprepared people will not be impressed by fact that it had two 23-mm guns VJa-23. Indeed, it only 3mm more than ordinary 20mm ShVAK (or similar German MG/FF and MG-151/20). But last three were nothing more but modified heavy machine guns with increased (from 12.7mm to 20mm) diameter of barrel. As a result speed of a shell was almost same as for machine gun prototype. But shell of VYa-23 was two times heavier than one of ShVAK, and had significantly higher speed. It is not an occasion that German fighters tried to avoid frontal attacks against Soviet stormoviks. For ground targets destruction VJa-23 was also very effective, specially if was accompanied with rocket missile launch.
Conceptual analysis of Il-2 stormovik proves that this aircraft came exactly in time and played exceptionally important part in slowing down of German tanks and motorized infantry on early stages of the (Great Patriotic - AS) war, and later did help in Soviet army advance.
Il-2 was the only Soviet strike aircraft capable to operate effectively in 1941 under conditions of complete domination of German aviation. Exactly at this time I.Stalin said that "...Il-2 is needed by the army as an air." Did those words played a bad joke with this great aircraft? Was it for good that so many Il's were produced during war? How many resources were consumed by overproduction of this plane? What was a final result of all this?
It is not a secret that during the War more than a half of Soviet air force were Il-2's. Absolutely clear that under those circumstances there will be always shortages of escort fighters... and unavoidable heavy losses.
Moreover, Il-2 was involved into solving non-typical combat tasks such as reconnaissance, routine bombing of railroad stations, depots, other ground objects, also ships. With removed guns Il-2 was used... as a torpedo-bomber. But if instead of stormoviks with relatively small bomb load those tasks were addressed to "classic" bombers like Tu-2, enemy losses could be much more significant. And is it justified to replace heavy bombers by Il-2 to make massive strikes against large targets?
Unfortunately Soviet airforce had no other choice in the situation when production of "classic" bombers was much smaller than one of Il-2. It was necessary to crash enemy with all available resources. And Il's did it.
'Wings of MotherLand' January 1992

Translated (Brrrr...) by A. Savine - corrections very welcome...
Created January 25, 1996
by Alexandre Savine		 Back to
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