Ilyushin Il2m Stormovik, Il10 "Bark".

[simon]

This aircraft seems to have attracted a bit more than its fair share of comments recently, so I thought I'd start it a thread of its own.

What's your views on it? All time best ground attack? Or just available in sufficient numbers to make sure that in this case the bomber would always get through?

[GregP]

I'll have to say it was a formidable ground attack plane. I've seen one. The armor is not to be believed. Quite thick. No WONDER it was so hard to shoot down! It probably used 850 hp just to carry the armor!

Was it a great aircraft? Probably mot. The performance was adqeuate, but nothing special. There WERE a lot of them, though, and 100 adequate planes make for one hell of an effective attack.

They maybe could have done better with P-47's, but who can say?

I'll allow it was the most-produced aircraft ever, making it an important plane in history, but won't go along with it being a great plane in its own right.

Any Russian would no doubt disagree.

[Romantic Technofreak]

The Il-2 was the scourge of the German Eastern front, our soldiers feared it, called it "Iron Gustav" or "Black Death". It accompanied any Soviet offensive, often setting the crucial weight, like on the northern pincer of the Kursk offensive, when it nearly destroyed the whole tank force of Model´s 9th Army. In mid 1944 it slaughtered the whole, now nearly tankless Army Group Center, giving Germany the biggest single defeat in the whole war.
It had its disadvantages, espacially that the rear gunner sat outside the tank body, making the number of casualties of rear gunners seven times as high as the one of the pilots. Ilyushin wanted to improve that, but as Stalin said "I urge you to produce more Il-2´s!" the assembly belts could not been stopped for converting to a better plane (one more prove of the inhuman nature of Stalin´s regime).
I am sure that the Il-2 often had to operate without any fighter cover, and it could do that, causing many losses anyway, because no matter how good the Soviet fighters were, the Luftwaffe fighters kept the inititiative throughout the whole war wherever they could appear in considerable numbers.
Not having an airplane like the Il-2 was another reason for the German defeat, and this although we invented that concept in WWI with the Junkers J 4!
The Il-2 is still admired and exhibited in Russia as one of the two weapons that won the war - the other one is the T-34 tank.
It was only when the Soviet Union could afford a partial conversion when the Il-10 partially replaced the Il-2 in February 1945, thus giving no crucial influence to the war any more, but avoiding most of the disadvantages the Il-2 really had, especially whole armour protection and considerable speed.
Constructing, building and pressing the Il-2 in Soviet service did not work without deeper consideration. The Il-2 was one of a little number of Soviet airplanes that really could resist the German attack,
putting the unarmoured, but much faster Su-2 out of service, that suffered the fate of any unarmoured light WWII bomber(maybe except the some carrier-based American ones like the Dautless, which survived because nothing else could take their position).
You are right if you consider that the Shturmovik concept was shoved away by the Soviet leadership after the war for preferring the western fighter-bomber concept. But with the A-10 and the Su-25 the assault airplane concept found its revival!

Simon, I think we have no more disagreements on the P-51 theme. For other arguments we should start more threads. I live in southern Germany, close to Nürnberg. I never had much to do with British soldiers, because they only go to southern Germany when it is maneuver time. I was born and raised in a rural region 100 km southwest of Nürnberg. I remember when I was a small boy that there was a British unit there, me and my friens especially admired their lovely "Ferris" armoured car, and sometimes the mysterious "Canberra"-bomber appeared in the sky (I never found out which air force used it, maybe the Canadians). And listening to school lessons was sometimes hard not only because of boring teachers, but also by the yelling sound of the Starfighters racing over the country! So much to youth remeberings.

[GregP]

While heavily armored, the IL-2's main "bite" was the bomb. It had somewhat light forward and rearward firing armament. That being said, 25 IL-2's could do a lot of damage with their guns.

The IL-10 addressed this and had 2 * 7.62 mm MG + 2 * 20 mm cannon firing forward and 1 * 20 mm cannon for the rear gunner.

It had a much harder hit than the IL-2.

For sheer survivability, the IL-2 / IL-10 were marevelous. They were very difficult to shoot down and could press the attack again and again, as long as the fuel and ammunition held out.

Lest we forget, they also were designed to be operated in conditions that grounded German and other Allied planes, and could be maintained by unskilled labor. They also flew on very low-grade gasloine when other types simply could not use the fuel.

On a snowy day in a small blizzard, when all the german aircraft were grounded, waves of IL-2 could fly over and attack with relative impunity since there was no German fighter cover to deal with.

All these factors make the IL-2 / IL-10 series really good aircraft for the Russian front.

How they would have fared in Western Europe is open to speculation. It never happened.

So let's give the IL-2 its due and say that it was there when needed, with the armament and fuel available, and it operated when other plances could not do so. It decimated German armor and other ground targets mostly due to being available in large numbers and being over the targets a lot of the time while being difficult to shoot down.

That pretty much describes a plane that was very good in its intended role of troop support for the Soviet Army. It was superb at doing exactly that.

[tenmmike]

i dont have much to add to this but here is a fairly nice link http://www.ctrl-c.liu.se/misc/ram/il-2.html and http://www.ctrl-c.liu.se/misc/ram/il2-art2.html

[simon]

The disagreement over the exact armament is liekly to continue, and is already on the Ground Attack thread anyway so I wont tough that here as I don't really want two threads arguing the same thing.

Romantic Technofreak, I guess we've reched a consensus over the P-51D anyway, I look forward to disagreeing with you over something else at some point! :D Not that I can be an argumentative person from time to time.....