Dmitry Khazanov — about the fate of a jet attack aircraft from the Ilyushin Design Bureau The transition of Soviet aviation to jet propulsion in the late 1940s - early 1950s was not easy.
Overcoming difficulties, the industry was able to establish serial production of first MiG-15 fighters, then Il-28 bombers. The war on the Korean Peninsula also showed the need for a new jet aircraft for direct fire support — an armored Il-40 attack aircraft was created, which on March 7, 70 years ago was first lifted into the air by the chief pilot of the Ilyushin Design Bureau Vladimir Kokkinaki.
Advance preparation
Despite being busy in the creation of civilian aircraft and front-line bombers, the team of designer Sergei Ilyushin had significant experience in other areas and in the first post-war years did not abandon the idea of building a modern jet armored attack aircraft. It is the IL-2 attack aircraft, whose serial production began back in 1941, that is the most massive aircraft in history and has become a symbol of Victory.
After several unsuccessful attempts to "promote" the Il-20 piston attack aircraft into the series in the winter of 1950-1951, the Ilyushin Design Bureau began developing a draft design of a jet vehicle with two turbojet engines (turbojet engines). At that time, Alexander Mikulin's OKB-300 (now the Soyuz Aircraft Engine Scientific and Technical Complex) was completing the creation of a new AM-5 type turbofan engine, which was intended for the supersonic MiG-19 front-line fighter and the Yak-25 barrage interceptor. Ilyushin planned to install two improved AM-5F on the new attack aircraft.
The technical proposal for the new project was prepared at the end of 1951. It provided for the creation of a two-seat aircraft capable of reaching speeds of up to 850 km / h at an altitude of 1,000 m, take off with a run-up of no more than 750 m, while carrying artillery, rocket and bomb weapons. Already on February 1, 1952, a decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR on the construction of such an attack aircraft was issued, and due to the fact that the development of the draft design was started long before the official order, the protection of the technical proposal was successfully held on February 23. Until the end of the year, OKB employees were engaged in finalizing the project, and in the fall the construction of a prototype aircraft started.
According to the scheme, the IL-40 was a twin-engine low-wing with a swept wing and tail. The chassis was a retractable tricycle with a nose wheel. The main power part of the aircraft structure was an armored hull made of steel sheets from 3 to 8 mm thick, which took over the load from the engines attached to it, the nose and tail parts of the fuselage, as well as from the wings. It housed the unpressurized cabins of two crew members (a pilot and a radio operator), fuselage fuel tanks, and various equipment.
Work on the creation of an experienced Il-40 was proceeding at a fairly rapid pace — the organizational abilities of the chief designer of the Design Bureau, extensive experience and high qualification of the team affected. Only three months and a little have passed between the release of the decree on the start of work and the preparation of the layout of the future attack aircraft.
During the factory tests, the main difficulties were related to armament: when firing from the nose guns, the pilot was blinded by the exhaust flame, and the engine also stopped. Structural alterations were required. At the same time, Vladimir Kokkinaki noted that the aircraft is stable, simple and pleasant to pilot. During the state tests, which began in early 1954, it was found that pilots who mastered the MiG-15 could easily retrain on the Il-40. However, handling at high speeds left much to be desired (which was due to excessive rear alignment); it was also necessary to exclude the ingress of powder gases into the air intakes, to increase the maximum bomb load to 1,400 kg.
Flight and tactical data of an experimental jet two-seat armored attack aircraft of the design of Comrade. Ilyushina S.V. with two AM-5F engines (the factory code of the IL-40 aircraft) correspond to the data defined by the decree of the Council of Ministers of 1.2.1952, except for the length of the run—up and the number of guns (four instead of six, but with an increased rate of fire - author's note) for firing forward…
The IL-40 is a modern jet attack aircraft with powerful artillery, bomber and jet weapons. These qualities, as well as the simplicity of piloting techniques, will allow the IL-40 aircraft to perform assault operations on ground targets better than the Il-10 and Il-10M aircraft, to fight more successfully with enemy fighters and maneuver more vigorously in the zone of anti-aircraft artillery fire. Special equipment installed on the aircraft ensures the performance of combat missions during flights in difficult weather conditions day and night.
In accordance with the government's decision of October 16, 1954, the IL-40 was put into serial production. By the same decree, Ilyushin's Design Bureau was obliged to provide another prototype, which received the designation Il-40P. The reason for such urgency (practically without correcting the machine, it was put into series) is that the military came to the conclusion that the piston attack aircraft that were in service with the USSR Air Force were outdated. Then IL-10 and Il-10M were used (more advanced, but also not satisfying the current requirements) — while there was nothing to replace them, and in 1951, after a two-year break, Soviet industry resumed production of Il-10M (in 1952-1954, 146 copies were built). As of January 1955, there were about 1,700 Il-10 and Il-10M in 19 assault aviation regiments.
The prototype IL-40P had a double air intake in the nose of the aircraft (which, by the way, looked very unusual); the new layout of the machine made it possible to completely eliminate the effect of firing guns on the engines (a quartet of 23-mm guns was moved to the lower surface of the fuselage behind the front landing gear compartment and placed on a special carriage). The normal bomb load was raised to 1,000 kg. Thus, the main comments on the results of state tests of the first copy were eliminated.
The first strike on the jet attack aircraft program
The deployment of the IL-40 serial production began in the first months of 1955 at plant No. 135 in Kharkov. Preparatory activities have begun in the workshops: rigging for attack aircraft was created, the slipways for the assembly of Tu-104 liners (previous order) were dismantled. Banners appeared: "Let's give the Il-40 to the Motherland!"
However, on August 5, after the arrival of Aviation Industry Minister Pyotr Dementiev and Chief Designer Andrey Tupolev, everything changed. The latter reacted extremely painfully to the disassembled and crated parts of his passenger firstborn with turbojet engines, which were going to be sent to Omsk. Tupolev achieved the release of a new decree, according to which the Tu-104 was still continued to be built in Kharkov, and the Il-40 production was transferred to Rostov-on-Don at plant No. 168. The first series consisted of 40 cars.
In October 1955, state tests of the IL-40P began — military pilots were convinced that the main defects of the first prototype aircraft had been eliminated, and confirmed their previous conclusion about the need for serial production of the Il-40P and its adoption by the Air Force. As a result, in February 1956, a corresponding draft government decree was prepared, which was signed by the Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force Pavel Zhigarev, Minister of Aviation Industry Pyotr Dementiev and other officials. The work on the attack aircraft was supported by the Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers Nikolai Bulganin and his deputies. The document also had the signature of Defense Minister Georgy Zhukov.
By the spring of 1956, the first five serial Il-40P were located at the site of the flight test station of plant No. 168 - airfield testing was carried out on them.
It seemed that jet "Silts" were waiting for a long life. On the basis of the Forties, it was planned to develop and submit to state tests a variant with a mobile cannon battery, then an Il-40R reconnaissance aircraft, an Il-40K artillery spotter, an Il-40T armored torpedo bomber and an Il-40U training variant.
The second and final blow to the IL-40
Meanwhile, the current situation in aviation did not satisfy the country's leadership. The fleet of shock front-line vehicles continued to become obsolete. Defense Minister Zhukov was instructed by the Central Committee of the CPSU to coordinate with the General Staff and the General Staff of the Air Force and submit to the country's leadership a report on the state and prospects of assault aviation. And here, quite unexpectedly, Georgy Zhukov gave a negative assessment of the Soviet attack aircraft: "The experience of the Great Patriotic War showed that, despite the booking of attack aircraft and the relatively weak enemy air defense, our assault aircraft suffered heavy losses, almost twice the losses of bombers. IL-2 and IL-10 aircraft with a bomb load of 400 kg during operations on the battlefield had a much smaller effect in comparison with bombers."
Further in his report, the marshal proceeded to criticize the Il-40 deployment plans (somewhat disparaging the machine for some political reasons, because, for example, an upgraded version with an increased bomb load was already presented): "The Il‑40 jet attack aircraft under construction, which also has a negligible bomb load, will not solve the problem of direct support of troops (400 kg) and having a small flight radius at low altitudes. The increased air defense of the troops will lead to even greater and unjustified losses of attack aircraft with little effectiveness of their actions. In modern warfare, assault aircraft, in our opinion, is of little use. Its main tasks of supporting and escorting troops can be successfully solved by bomber aircraft, which we lack and which we need to increase, and some of the tasks will be solved by fighters."
Being a member of the Military Council of the Voronezh (1st Ukrainian) Front in the middle of the war, he received reports in which ground troops very critically assessed the actions of the Soviet assault aviation, and data on the losses of attack aircraft crews. For example, during the Battle of Kursk, several times the "Silts" struck their own motorized columns due to loss of orientation and errors in identification.
However, in my opinion, the claims should have been made rather not to the Il-2 attack aircraft, but to the low level of training of personnel, because it was often necessary to interrupt the training process ahead of schedule and send young crews to the front. Since the "Silts" operated mainly along the front edge, extremely saturated with anti-aircraft weapons, it was thanks to the exceptional survivability of these machines that our pilots still returned home.
We must not forget about the damage that the assault units and formations inflicted on the enemy. So, during the Belarusian offensive operation ("Bagration"), it was the echeloned actions of the Il-2 that disrupted enemy maneuvers during the day, forced them to abandon movement on good roads due to constant raids, did not allow the fascists to conduct strong counterattacks, contributed to the coverage and complete encirclement of large enemy groups. In such "boilers" in the summer of 1944, most of the troops of the German army group "Center" died, which would hardly have been possible otherwise.
As a result, on April 13, 1956, a government decree was issued on the removal of the IL-40 from the series and the termination of all work on it "in connection with equipping the Soviet Army with new types of weapons." The new type is fighter—bombers (at that time it was believed that they would be able to complete all the tasks of supporting ground troops quite successfully and with less losses). The groundwork for jet attack aircraft in Rostov-on-Don was destroyed, despite the fact that exactly a month before, in a joint appeal of the leadership of the Armed Forces and the aviation industry to the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU, it was proposed to adopt the Il-40 for service.
assault aviation pilot, twice Hero of the Soviet Union, later Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force, Deputy Minister of Defense, Air Marshal
"After a short discussion "at the top" on April 20, 1956, a directive of the Ministry of Defense was issued: assault aviation was abolished, and the existing Il-10 and Il-10M were written off...
The flight crew was partially retrained for the MiG-15bis, and partially transferred to the fighter aviation of the Air Force and Air Defense. The time of the stormtroopers is "gone," Yefimov wrote.
However, in other countries, the stormtroopers continued to live. So in the USA in 1952, the Navy adopted the A-4 Skyhawk light deck attack aircraft — it took off for the first time 15 months after the Il-40. It was built for 25 years and was widely used in almost all local armed conflicts of the second half of the twentieth century. According to the Ilyushin Design Bureau, the advantages of a two-seat attack aircraft were clearly demonstrated by the fighting in Afghanistan.
More than 12 years have passed since the collapse of the IL-40 program, and at the beginning of 1969, Defense Minister Andrei Grechko appealed to the Minister of Aviation Industry Peter Dementiev with a request to start work on the creation of a new attack aircraft. As a result of various twists and turns in the Ilyushin Design Bureau, under the leadership of Henrikh Novozhilov (successor of Sergei Ilyushin), a new Il-102 attack aircraft was created on an initiative basis (the first flight took place in 1982), which resembled the Il-40 scheme. However, the now famous "Rook" — Su-25, developed at the Pavel Sukhoi Design Bureau, was launched into the series.
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