Complete Aircraft with Virtual Cockpit
FS2004 FSX Ilyushin Il 2 Tankbuster. The Ilyushin Il-2 was a single seat Ground Attack aircraft. This is the single seat first production version that came out in early 1941. The first of over 35, 000 made. The IL-2 is a single-engine, propeller driven, low-wing monoplane of mixed construction with a crew of two (one in early version), specially designed for assault operations. The most notable design feature of the aircraft was the inclusion of armor in an airframe load-bearing scheme. Armour-plates replaced the frame and paneling throughout the nasal and middle part of the fuselage. An armored hull made of riveted homogeneous armor steel AB-1 (AB-2), secured the aircrafts engine, cockpit, water and oil radiators, and fuel tanks. The Il-2 was eventually produced in vast quantities, becomi
Show more... ng the single most widely produced military aircraft in aviation history. However, only 249 had been built by the time Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. Though seemingly an ordinary and unexciting machine with superficial close similarity to Britains Fairey Battle (which proved a disaster), the IL-2 was almost certainly built in larger numbers than any other single type of aircraft. Output averaged 1, 200 per month during most of World War II, to give a total of approximately 36, 000. When the IL-10 developed version is added the total is reported to amount to 42, 330. Armament of the original IL-2 was two 20mm ShVAK and two 7. 62mm ShKAS guns firing ahead, plus eight 82mm rockets and four 100kg bombs. The need for rear protection resulted in a second crew member being added to man a rear gun, usually a 12. 7mm BS, and the forward guns were changed to the hard-hitting 20 or 37mm VYa, and sometimes two of each. Bomb load went up to 600kg, including PTAB armour-piercing bombs. The Shturmovik weapons could pierce all German armoured vehicles, even the Tiger tank being vulnerable when attacked from the rear. Swarms of these tough aircraft are judged by the Soviet Union to have played the dominant role in air warfare on the Eastern Front. IL-2 remained in operational service in the Soviet Union and with the Air Forces of Czechoslovakia and Poland into the 1950s. Indeed Stalin commented that the IL-2 was as essential to the Soviet Army as air and bread. CFS2 mdl by Thicko, upgraded to FS2004 FSX by A. F. Scrub
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