1:32 IL-2 SINGLE SEATER

An attack aircraft with an armored tub

The Ilyushin Il-2 in single-seat form is the early production shape of the most numerously built combat aircraft in history. What is remarkable about it is the structure: the armor was not an added plate but a load-bearing part of the airframe, into which the engine and the pilot were literally built. From below and from the sides the machine could therefore take hits from small-caliber weapons. It lacked defense to the rear, however, which German fighters soon found out, and from 1942 a two-seat version with a gunner was produced for that reason.

Where the upper color ends

Soviet machines wore green on the upper surfaces and light blue underneath, and the most interesting thing about the whole scheme is the boundary between them. On an attack aircraft threatened by fire mostly from below and from behind, the dividing line ran high on the sides of the fuselage, so that as much blue as possible was visible from the ground. A machine protecting itself against a view from above, by contrast, had the color pulled down below the fuselage. The position of that line is therefore not decoration but an answer to the question of where the observer will come from. In 1943 the whole scheme moreover changed to a pair of gray shades, because the fighting moved to greater altitudes over more varied terrain.

The benefit during the build

The contents are a pair of cockpit masks, for the outer as well as the inner side, and a pair of markings. The glazing of the attack aircraft is set into a thick armored frame with pronounced edges, and that is exactly where a clean transition of paint shows the most. A straight edge of film does work here that hand-cut tape could not manage on such a narrow area without wrinkling.