Passenger and cargo planes with the letters IL painted on their hulls can
often be seen roaming the skies  over
Russia and the international airspace. IL stands for the world-famous
Ilyushin aircraft designers named after the outstanding Russian plane maker
Sergei Ilyushin.
Sergei Ilyushin was born on March 18, 1894 into a large peasant family
in Central Russia. To help his struggling parents financially, Sergei started
working at an early age changing many jobs. It was a lucky coincidence
that eventually brought the 16-year-old teen to the St.Petersburg airfield
where he was assigned the task of cleaning up and leveling off the runways.
The airfield was then playing host to Russia’s first-ever aviation week
and Sergei happily gawked at the famous Russian pilots and their planes
that looked like kites gliding so easily across the skies above…
From that moment on Sergei’s life would never be the same again. He enrolled
in the local pilot-training school. After the Bolsheviks took power in
1917 Ilyushin joined the Red Army and fought in the Civil War. Once
he was ordered to take apart a shot down enemy airplane, an English one,
and take it to Moscow. That hands-on experience was not lost on Sergei
who was now increasingly thinking about someday being able to design his
own aircraft. It took lots of knowledge to do that, however, and after
the Civil War was over, Sergei Ilyushin entered the Air Force academy and
studied day and night mastering the new profession. He successfully passed
his graduation exams but, keen as he was to design airplanes, he, then
30, had to spend some time overseeing the production of new planes for
the Red Army. The Second World War was already on, though, and Ilyushin
saw it his duty to personally design airplanes that were so desperately
needed by the Red Army. He bombarded the government with pleas and
eventually he was given the go-ahead putting him at the head of a design
bureau at one of the country’s plane building factories.
Ilyuyshin’s first plane, a long-range bomber, was taken up by the army
right after it passed muster in the tests and was later modified and dubbed
as Moskva. It was the Moskva that established a world record in 1938
flying nonstop from Moscow to Vladivostok and back. The following
year it accomplished another nonstop mission across the Atlantic to North
America. During World War Two the Ilyushin 4 multipurpose plane was
this country’s workhorse long-range bomber boasting a clear technological
edge over its western counterparts.
Soon afterwards Ilyushin designed his famous IL 2 ground attack plane the
Red Army soldiers called a “flying tank” and the Germans nicknamed as “black
death”… “The IL-2s are a real nightmare, they are driving us crazy!” complained
the German POWs. The Soviet pilots raved about the plane relentlessly
thrashing the enemy from on high…
Caught flatfooted by the IL-2’s might, the German aircraft designers, prodded
by Hitler, were working flat out to their own analog of the unbeatable
Russian strafer…
Meanwhile, Ilyushin kept souping up his designs presiding over the construction
of more than 40,000 IL-2s – more than any designer had ever constructed
anywhere before or since…
After the war Ilyushin launched a raft of safe and comfortable IL-12, IL-14
and IL-18 passenger planes. The latter one was a big hit around the world.
In 1962 Ilyushin came up with his famous IL-62 intercontinental jetliner
capable of ferrying nearly 200 passengers up to 10 kilometers away. The
plane’s arrival in New York crated a big splash. The news people immediately
dubbed it as a “flying saucer”…
The mere fact that the Russian President still uses the IL-62s and its
modifications speaks volumes about the plane’s reliability and comfort.
Sergei Ilyushin’s talent and hard work won him three gold stars of Hero
of Socialist labor and a wealth of state awards. Despite his well-deserved
clout, Ilyushin was always a self-effacing man and hating to talk about
himself. “It’s planes that should speak about their maker, not the
other way round,” he used to say. And speak they always did, very loud
and clear…
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