25. The Aeronautical Engineer Who Withstood the Pressure of Imprisonment to Design One of WWII’s Most Successful Airplanes
Like Curt Herzstark, above, Soviet aeronautical engineer and aircraft designer Vladimir Petlyakov displayed extraordinary poise under pressure to get creative and industrious while imprisoned. Herzstark had turned to creativity to save his neck by inventing a mathematical aid in Hitler’s concentration camps. Petlyakov drew on his fount of creativity to design a successful airplane, the Petlyakov Pe-2, while locked up in Stalin’s gulags. Unlike Herztark, whose calculator did not help the German war effort, Petlyakov’s plane helped the Soviets win WWII.
The Pe-2 was the USSR’s most-produced twin-engine aircraft of WWII, with 11,427 built. Fast, maneuverable, and resilient, the Pe-2 proved to be one of the conflict’s outstanding tactical attack airplanes. On the Eastern Front, it performed functions similar to those carried out by the better-known British de Haviland Mosquito. Versatile, the Pe-2 proved itself in a variety of tasks: in addition to its main role as a light bomber, it was also successful in reconnaissance, plus heavy fighter and night fighter assignments.
Related: WWII Bomber Aircraft That Carried The Most Devastating Bombing Campaigns.