Word: stormovik
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Died. Sergei Ilyushin, 82, Soviet aeronautics genius who designed more than 50 different airplanes, including the new IL-86 airbus soon to be put into service; in Moscow. Ilyushin's heavily armored low-flying tank buster called the Stormovik destroyed so many Nazi tanks in World War II that the Germans dubbed it "the flying death...
Finns under arms. They drove back the Russians in a series of savage, no quarter battles, but when the advance stopped at the Svir River, the gamble was lost. After Stalingrad, the Russians came surging back with heavy tanks and Stormovik planes, crippling the Finnish army in its long retreat through the forests and swamps of Karelia...
...vodka, hurtle down the runway, take off simply by hauling up their wheels. In combat, Red flight leaders flew above and behind their men to make sure no one shied away. They were never the finely honed flyers Germany had for her Luftwaffe (the average life of a Stormovik pilot was seven missions), but there were always plenty to take the place of those who died...
...maneuverable, though still second-rate planes by German and U.S. standards. The best ones were derived from Western models. But in tactical air, the defense-conscious Russians took a back seat to no one. One of the best ground attack planes of World War II, the armor-plated Stormovik, came off the drawing board of another Russian, Sergei Iliushin. German Panzer divisions called it "the black death." In one ten-day period, the Stormoviks knocked out over 400 Nazi tanks. The Russians also learned to build planes in a hurry. By 1945, Russia's factories were turning them...
Sergei V. Iliushin, 57, rags-to-riches designer of the legendary IL-2 (Stormovik). A poor peasant's son in Czarist days, he trekked 300 miles to Moscow at the age of 15 to get into aviation. Rose slowly through the ranks, first as mechanic then as chief mechanic. When orders came down for an attack plane, Iliushin's was the only design smaller than a B17. After the war, turned out twin-engine (IL-12) and four-engine (IL-18) transports that look something like U.S. Convairs and Boeing Stratocruisers. Now working on a fast, twin...