Ilyushin Il-40P BRAWNY
The new experimental Ilyushin Il-40 BRAWNY aircraft flew into the air on March 7, 1953, however, during the tests it turned out that during firing from onboard guns, powder gases caused the jet engines to stop. Ilyushin proposed another version of the attack aircraft under the designation Il-40P. A distinctive feature of this aircraft was to be a fundamentally different scheme of engine and gun air intakes, in which the possibility of the impact of firing on the operation of the power plant was completely excluded. In order to get away from the problem, the designers had to change the appearance of the attack aircraft. The air intakes of the engines were brought to the front of the fuselage, as a result of which the plane acquired a kind of nostrils and began to resemble a flying "double-barreled shotgun".
The nose cannon mount was removed and transferred to the lower surface of the fuselage, behind the compartment of the front landing gear, where all four TKB-495A guns were mounted on a special carriage. To protect the cannon trunks from the ingress of foreign objects flying out from under the wheels of the front landing gear, anti-mud shields were installed in front of the barrels, the release of which was blocked with the front landing gear. The bomb load of the new attack aircraft was 1000 kg, and in the reload variant 1400 kg. The AM-5F engines were replaced by two more powerful RD-9Vs with a thrust of 2600 kgf in normal mode and 3250 kgf in take-off mode with afterburner. At the request of the military, a mirror periscope was installed on the moving part of the cockpit lantern Il-40P, improving the visibility of the upper rear hemisphere. The rest of the aircraft design remained unchanged.
At the end of 1955, after the completion of state tests of the Il-40P, it was decided to take the Il-40P into service and to begin its mass production. In the spring of 1956, at the flight test station of the 168th aircraft factory in Rostov-on-Don, the aerodrome preparation of five serial Il-40Ps was coming to an end. And it would seem that the aircraft was ready for launch in mass production.
Given the new Soviet doctrine, aircraft were to be used for potential delivery of nuclear weapons. As a result of the new doctrine, the IL-40 aircraft was unnecessary, So on 13 April 1956, the USSR government unexpectedly adopted a resolution on the removal of the Il-40P aircraft from serial production and termination all work on it “in connection with equipping the Soviet Army with new types and weapons”. And a week later, attack aircraft in the Soviet Air Force were abolished. The Soviet military doctrine of that time preferred missile weapons and fighter-bombers, which were supposed to hit targets outside the reach of ground forces.
Fighter planes and bombers were to replace the attack aircraft. and two built attack aircraft and all the equipment of the plant were scrapped. So, millions of Soviet rubles were wasted. During the development of the IL-40, it was envisaged to create several modifications based on its design.
IL-40K was intended for use as an artillery reconnaissance spotter. By layout, it had much in common with a production aircraft and differed from it only in the nose of the fuselage, which was completely redone and was a transparent flashlight with the cockpit of the third crew member - navigator-spotter. His workplace was protected by armor, and the front, lower and side windows of the lantern were made of bulletproof glass. The RD-9V engines had the usual side air intakes, as in the first prototype, and the cannon armament was supposed to be installed in the wing in place of the wing bomb bay. The first prototype Il-40K was already under construction - the building assembly of the fuselage was ending when an order was received to cease all work on the Il-40 aircraft.
IL-40T - armored torpedo bomber of high and low torpedo throwing. As on the Il-40K, the navigator was located in the nose of the fuselage with a transparent lamp that had flat upper and lower windshields for aiming during torpedo throwing. The location of the RD-9V engines and cannon weapons on this plane was the same as the IL-40K. Work on the IL-40T was stopped at the initial design stage. How perfect the concept of the Il-40 aircraft turned out to be, and at the same time, how short-sighted the decision to stop work on it became, showed the further course of events. The improvement opportunities that the Il-40 potentially possessed were reflected in the design of the IL-42 two-seater armored attack aircraft.
The advantages of the double scheme are especially clearly demonstrated by the military operations in Afghanistan. There, single-seat combat aircraft participating in assault operations against ground targets were struck by the fire of portable anti-aircraft missile systems that fired after them. And the obsolete IL-28 bombers with a stern cannon mount after exiting the attack destroyed the MANPADS operators who were preparing to launch the missiles by the rear gun fire. Practically, the IL-28 aircraft did not have losses from this modern means of air defense of the ground forces. The history of the Il-40 aircraft largely repeats the initial stage of the fate of its famous predecessor - the Il-2 aircraft. Fortunately, in the latter case, incredible efforts and sacrifices were not required to correct the mistake made. Therefore, the next specialized Su-25 attack aircraft appeared in the Soviet Air Force only in the 1970s.
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