Ilyushin Il-2 Sturmovik
Nicknamed “The Flying Tank“, the Il-2 Sturmovik ground attack bomber was the most produced military airplane in history, with over 36,000 built. Designed in 1938, the Sturmovik’s most distinguishing feature was a 1500 lbs armored tub that protected the pilot, engine, fuel tank, and radiator, rendering it one of the toughest and most survivable airplanes of its day, nearly impervious to bullets and 20 mm cannon fire from below. That gave Il-2 pilots the confidence to press and persist in attacks in the teeth of fierce ground fire that would have been foolhardy or even suicidal with other aircraft.
Prototypes first flew in 1939, and Il-2s entered operational service in May 1941. Armed with two 23mm cannons, two machine guns, and loaded with up to 1300 lbs of bombs plus 12 rockets, the Sturmovik carried a devastating punch. A punch that became stronger in 1943, with the introduction of shaped charge bomblets weighing 3.3 lbs yet capable of penetrating the thinner armor atop German tanks, and which the Il-2s carried in clusters of 192 to shower on enemy columns.
At war’s beginning, insufficient training on the aircraft, which had been introduced to operational squadrons only a month before the German invasion, meant that few pilots were capable of utilizing it to its full. Between that and inadequate fighter protection, Il-2s suffered appalling losses to German fighters – e.g.; during the first month of fighting, the Fourth Air Regiment lost 55 of its 65 Sturmovik. Once reasonable fighter protection became available as the Soviets clawed their way back to aerial parity and then supremacy, and as Il-2 pilots gained experience, tactics improved and Sturmoviks began wreaking havoc. During the Battle of Stalingrad, Il-2s helped seal the Soviet victory with a treetop level raid on the main airbase from which supplies were flown to the besieged Germans, destroying 72 cargo planes on the ground, shooting down others, and damaging many more. That crippled an already struggling resupply operation and hastened the trapped Germans’ surrender.
By the time of the Battle of Kursk, Stormovik tactics had been further honed, and new ones introduced, such as the “Circle of Death” in which groups of 8 or more Il-2s flew a circle around a target, each protecting the one ahead with its forward-firing machine guns and cannons from enemy fighters, while taking turns to dive and attack the target, then rejoin the circle and allow another plane to leave the circle and attack. Sturmovik squadrons by then had also learned to operate in close coordination with ground forces to decimate the Germans, such as a mass Il-2 attack on July 7, 1943, that was credited with destroying 70 German tanks in 20 minutes. Against soft targets such as supply convoys and troops caught in the open, Sturmoviks was even more murderous.
So important was the plane to the Soviet war effort that when production numbers fell below expectations, Stalin wrote those responsible ” Our Red Army now needs IL-2 aircraft like the air it breathes, like the bread it eats. … I ask you not to try the government’s patience, and demand that you manufacture more ILs. This is my final warning.” Unsurprisingly, production increased sharply soon thereafter.