Page 91 - The Chief Culprit

68 y e Chief Culprit

But Hitler did not have a single comparable plane. And the rest of the world had noth-
ing comparable. Not a single nation in the world succeeded by the end of the war in creating
anything equal to what the Red Army had at its beginning. Stalin had “only” 249 Il-2 planes,
but Soviet industry was ready to produce them in any quantity. Even after the losses in the
second half of 1941 of the greater part of aviation and motor factories, after the loss of all
factories that produced aluminum, the Il-2 was still produced in the largest-scale series in the
history of world aviation. e Il-2 did not become obsolete until the very end of the war, and
entered history as the most mass-produced warplane of all time.
e Il-2 carried huge losses. e low-flying attack plane was not designed for air battle,
and following Stalin’s orders it had no defensive weapons. Several days after the German
invasion, Stalin personally called Ilyushin and demanded that the Il-2 be produced again
as a two-seater: in defensive war, even an aggressor airplane needs to have defensive weap-
ons. However, it was already impossible to return to the original designs without stopping
production. And it was impossible to stop production. erefore, the plane continued to be
made as a one-seater. e Il-2 delivered a huge amount of destruction to the enemy, but it
also was quick to perish. If the Il-2 had also had a rear gunner protecting the hind hemi-
sphere, the Red Army in no time would have had thousands of armed airplanes of this type.
Each of them could have completed tens and even hundreds of raids. e Il-2 attack-planes
alone could have turned the tide of war. But there was no gunner, so in the early period of
the war the Il-2 planes perished by the hundreds and thousands. In the years 1941 and 1942,
an Il-2 plane in action could reasonably be expected to last only ten or thirteen flights before
it was destroyed. 2
Only by the end of 1942 was there some success in changing the finalized design of the
plane. e Il-2 was once again produced as a two-person plane. Now the plane had a gunner
with a large-caliber machine gun. However, this was still only a half-valid solution. ere
was never a return to the original design. e shooter’s cabin was added outside the armored
3
compartment. e pilot was safe behind the armor, while the gunner was just covered by
plywood. Of course he deflected the attacks of enemy fighters that came up from the tail, but
he quickly perished himself, and then the Il-2 once again became defenseless. e best pilots
trained before the war perished in the first months of war due to a lack of defensive weaponry
on the Il-2. When defensive weaponry was finally installed on the planes, Il-2s were already
operated by war-time pilots, trained in very specific ways. One of my mentors at the Military
Academy, Air Force Major General Alexander Kuchumov, Hero of the Soviet Union, had
arrived at the front in 1942. He had standard war-time training behind him—an hour and
a half of flight time on the Il-2. e unique attack plane, the best of its kind, proved to be a
particularly effective weapon. But it could have yielded even better results had well-trained
pilots flown it. A few of the war-time trainees who survived became masters of their craft,
heroes, and generals. And thousands perished after just a few missions.
But the problem was not that there were too few Il-2 planes. And the problem was
not that they were bad planes. e problem was that the design of the plane was dictated by
strategy, and the strategy was that of a sudden attack against the enemy’s air bases, after which
the plan was to continue the war without resistance from the enemy’s air force. e Il-2 had
to be used in a defensive war, when the enemy had air superiority. But this great airplane was
created for an entirely different kind of war.