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Sunday, June 7, 2020

Ilyushin Il-2

Ilyushin Il-2
I'm watching a YouTube video about Russian and German WW2 aircraft. When it gets to the IL-2, the caption mentions that it was the most produced aircraft during the war. The Russians built some 36,000 of them. That was a surprise. America, Britain and Germany built large numbers of aircraft, but the closest anyone came to that number is the Germans who built about 34,000 of the Bf-109.

The Ilyushin IL-2 wasn't a fighter, it was a ground attack aircraft. It had some serious armor around the pilot and engine which made it a little heavy relative to the amount of power the engine produced. There are only two examples flying today. There are all kinds of stories about this airplane, but most of them come from Stalinist Russia, so their validity is suspect.

Matthew Acred has a extensive collection of photos of this aircraft.

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1 comment:

  1. xoxoxoBruceJune 8, 2020 at 9:03:00 PM PDT

    Wow, that's a surprise and that's just the Il-2s. That's in addition to other planes they built, plus the 4300 planes the UK gave them and the 14,440 planes we gave them. I suppose it makes sense to build 36,000 ground attack planes considering how long they battled the Germans on the Eastern Front.

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