Yeah, they're pretty amazing to see fly again, that's for sure! The IL-2 will be flying again on the 29th, with three other ground-attack aircraft, so stay tuned! :-)
Two Stars flying together. Love the engines' sounds. Apparrently the Ilyushin Il-2 had self-sealing fuel tanks, by releasing carbon dioxide into the empty fuel tank space, in the event of them being hit by groundfire, a safety feature that was ahead of its time. It also had pilot-protecting armour. It was also armed to the teeth: 600 kilograms of bombs, 8 rockets, 300 23mm shells for VIa cannon (150 per gun), and 1800 rounds for each machine gun-3,600 rounds. The gunner had a 12.7mm Berezin machine gun, and 10 DAG-10 distance aviation grenades. No wonder it was called the Flying Tank. It mostly saw service on the Eastern Front.
Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it! This Saturday the IL-2 will be flying with a B-25, F7F Tigercat, and (hopefully) A-1 Skyraider... it will be really neat to see the size comparison then.
A lot of factors come into play with recovering these birds. Many weren't even expected to survive the war, most were scrapped and melted down, others have had issues with retrieval, etc.
The pilots that fly this one all agree that it is NOT a fun plane to fly. Very unstable and requires constant attention. One even compared it to flying a helicopter.
Wow-I guarantee that my grandfather and great uncle wouldn't have wanted to see the IL2 coming at them,and probably did experience it's firepower as they both were with the Latvian 19th SS infantry division with army group north!Both VERY tough men -they survived....as a Latvian I'm supposed to hate Russians-but the more I read about the history of that horrible conflict-the more respect I have for the incredible response of the Soviet people-it was the people that did it not f'ing Stalin!
