The key feature of the design was the 7 mm armoured shell which protected the crew, engine, radiators and fuel tanks. The original prototype was known as the TsKB-55, and it was a two-seater aircraft. Two designs were submitted – one by Sergey Ilyushin, perhaps the Soviet Union’s top aviation designer, and certainly the most prolific. With war looming on the horizon, a formal request for an anti-tank aircraft was finally issued in 1938. Throughout the 1930s, studies were made into methods of tankbusting from the air, but all proved fruitless. The rise of the tank throughout the early decades of the 20 th Century presented a problem to the Soviet military, who did not have a way to deal with enemy armour. Indeed Josef Stalin himself described the plane as ‘necessary for the Red Army, like air, like bread’.
Today we take a close look at the IL-2, a Soviet ground attack plane that was the staple of the Soviet Air Force during World War II.
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