Ilyushin Il-2 aircraft will be reconstructed at Nevsky Shipyard

At Nevsky Shipyard, Il-2 aircraft is being reconstructed.

The Ilyushin Il-2 was a ground-attack aircraft produced by the Soviet Union in large numbers during the Second World War.

To Il-2 pilots, the aircraft was simply the diminutive "Ilyusha". To the soldiers on the ground, it was the "Hunchback", the "Flying Tank" or the "Flying Infantryman".

The Il-2 aircraft played a crucial role on the Eastern Front. When a factory fell behind on its deliveries, Joseph Stalin told the factory manager that they were «as essential to the Red Army as air and bread.»

"It was crude, in the same sense that a sledgehammer is crude. It had no adornments and was dedicated to its function without regard to aesthetics." - Greg Goebel, Aviation enthusiast and writer

Absolutely, we can say that the IL-2 became the most massive combat aircraft in stories aviation. The total release of attack aircraft exceeded 36 thousand units. This aircraft was actively used in battles in all theaters of operations of the Great Patriotic War, as well as in the Soviet-Japanese War. In total, from 1941 to 1945, the combat losses of the IL-2 attack aircraft amounted to 11 vehicles. Contrary to many beliefs, this is about half of all losses, a little more than 448 thousand aircraft were written off as non-combat losses (lost as a result of accidents, catastrophes, depreciation of the material part). For the entire time of the war, the losses of the flight personnel of attack aircraft are estimated at 11 12 people, including 054 pilots, 7837 - observer pilots, 221 - air shooters.