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Category: Scale Articles

Created on Thursday, 12 January 2012 21:45

Written by Ron Peterka

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ILYUSHIN IL-2  “STORMOVIK”

Ron Peterka

If you were a Russian infantryman or tank crew in WWII serving on the Eastern European Front, there was one very comforting sight over the vast plains with thousands of Russian troops fighting for their Country.  That was the sight of the low altitude ground support Stormoviks with 23mm cannons blazing and two wing mounted 7.62 mm (50 cal.) machine guns blazing knocking out German tanks and troops all the while under withering German ground fire.

The Russian infantrymen called the Stormovik “Hunchback”, or “Flying Tank”, but the Germans called the deadly enemy “Black Death”.   Despite a relatively slow airspeed, the Stormovik was extremely difficult to shoot out of the air because it was heavily armored with steel plates protecting pilot, gunner, engine, and liquid cooling systems.  The oil cooler radiator was partially retractable for strafing runs to prevent frontal ground fire from hitting the vital oil cooler.  At least one Il-2 flew home with almost 600 bullet holes in the airframe.

The aircraft was sturdy, simple, and easy to maintain in primitive conditions.  While the Stormoviks were destroyed in great numbers, the Russians were capable of producing great numbers of them.  There were approximately 36,000 of them built in various configurations during WWII.  This would be three times more of them produced than of any other WWII fighter plane of any other Country.  Only five examples are known to exist today, all non-flyable in museum collections.

 The Stromovik Il-2 was designed by Sergei Ilyshin (1894-1977), who began his aircraft design work in company with Polakarpov and Tupolev, two other famous Russian aircraft designers.  He went on to design airliners after WWII.

For the serious scale builder the Il-2 is a good project, because, it has a wide range of color schemes from camo to winter white and various markings.  As a model, the design is a liquid cooled aircraft so the nose would be tightly cowled and engine cooling would be a challenge.  As an electric cooling air can enter through scale air intakes.  The relatively large wing area allows good load carrying ability.  While I am unaware of any kits, or ARFs, one good plan set was published in RCModeler magazine a few years back.

Three views and photo Packs are available at Bob’s Aircraft Documentation, formerly Scale Model Research.   His web site is www. Bobsairdoc.com  .  Amazon Books offers a variety of books referencing the Il – 2 Stormovik.

1/12/2012