Founder of Ilyushin OKB. His Il-2 Sturmovik remains the most-produced combat aircraft in history
In late 1941, as Il-2 production lagged, Stalin telegraphed the factory: "The Il-2 is as necessary to the Red Army as air, as bread."
Youngest son of a Vologda peasant, he left home at fifteen and first encountered aviation as a field hand leveling an aerodrome in 1910. After graduating from the Zhukovsky Air Force Academy, he founded his own design bureau in 1933 and produced the Il-2 Sturmovik: 36,183 built, the decisive ground-attack weapon of the Eastern Front. Postwar he rebuilt Soviet civil aviation with the Il-12, Il-14, Il-18, and the jet-era Il-62. The only person to receive seven Stalin Prizes and three Hero of Socialist Labor stars, he led the Ilyushin OKB for 37 years.
Career Timeline
- 1914–18Aviation mechanic, Imperial Russian Army; earned pilot's license
- 1919–21Mechanic and commissar, Red Army aviation repair trains
- 1921–26Zhukovsky Air Force Academy; military aviation engineer
- 1926–31Chairman, aircraft section, NTK VVS (Air Force sci-tech committee)
- 1931–33Head of design bureau, TsAGI
- 1933–70Chief and later General Constructor, Ilyushin OKB
- 1967–77General-Colonel of Engineering; Academician, USSR Academy of Sciences
Related historical events
The Il-2 Sturmovik — Flying Tank
The Il-2 Sturmovik is the most-produced combat aircraft in history (36,183 units) and was the decisive ground-attack weapon on the Eastern Front of World War II. Ilyushin called it his 'flying tank': a heavily armored attack aircraft with 4–8 mm of steel protecting the cockpit and engine, designed to survive heavy machine-gun fire and shrapnel while striking German armor and infantry at treetop height with cannon, rockets, and bombs.
Design work began in 1938 at the experimental design bureau in Ivanovo-Voznesensk. The single-seat prototype TsKB-55 first flew in October 1940 piloted by Vladimir Kokkinaki, and the production Il-2 entered manufacture in March 1941. Early combat revealed vulnerability to German fighters attacking from the rear, and a rear gunner was added in 1942, converting the aircraft to a two-seater. At the Battle of Kursk (1943), Il-2 squadrons deployed the new PTAB anti-tank bomblets, inflicting devastating losses on German armored formations.
Production was treated as the highest state priority throughout the war. When the German advance on Moscow forced the evacuation of factories to Kuibyshev (now Samara) in the autumn of 1941, lagging output drew Stalin's famous telegram to the plant director: 'The Il-2 is as necessary to the Red Army as air, as bread. Give us more Il-2s. This is my final warning.' Thereafter production exceeded 1,000 aircraft per month, and by war's end Il-2s constituted roughly one-third of all Soviet combat aircraft. Ilyushin received his first Stalin Prize for the Il-2 in 1941.