• Military

• WMD Menu                           

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

Ilyushin Il-26 strategic bomber

Aviation equipment, despite its constant improvement, became obsolete quite quickly before the war, and, of course, the military developed requirements for it, not based on the real capabilities of industry, but looking at publications abroad. There was a report in the magazine Flight about the design of a bomber in the United States with a flight range of 5000 km and a speed of 600 km/h, which means the Soviet Union also needed this. And the fact that the production culture and the qualifications of specialists, together with backward technological processes did not allow this, did not matter. The leadership forgot that the engine for an airplane is the most high-tech product which usually takes six to ten years to create. So the Soviets stormed the heights of technological progress with their bare hands. Therefore, all attempts to create the ultramodern bomber aircraft in the Soviet Union during World War II failed.

In 1947, the Ilyushin Design Bureau led the development of a strategic bomber project capable of reaching the United States, under the general name Il-26. This project included several options under development, which differed from each other by the type of engines and their number (four and six).

After World War II, a network of air bases was created around the borders of the USSR, from which US bombers could deliver a nuclear strike on the industrial and political centers of the country. The beginning of the Cold War met the Soviet Union without strategic bombers. This determined the deployment in the USSR of work on promising aviation means of delivering nuclear weapons to targets in the United States. The technical task for the creation of a new bomber was received by Tupolev Design Bureau and Yakovlev Design Bureau in 1947.

In accordance with this assignment, in 1947-1948, design work on long-range bombers with both piston and turboprop engines was continued at the Design Bureau of SV Ilyushin. IL-26 development began in 1947, after the strengthening of the design bureau team by OKB-472 designers headed by V.M. Myasishchev. Their development at a time when fighter jets had already begun to adopt air defense aviation, was justified by the possibility of using such bombers in difficult weather conditions and at night, installing defensive weapons on them that could detect a target and conduct aimed fire at it in the absence of visual visibility . The requirements of the Air Force stipulated that, in the variant with piston engines, the bomber had to have a flight range of 6,000 km, and with turboprops - 9,000 km.

In the design bureau of S.V. Ilyushin, the new bomber was assigned the code Il-26, but this designation hid a whole family of variants with various types of engines. The preliminary design involved three options for the main power plant. The power plant according to the project could consist of Shvetsov ASh-2TK piston engines with a capacity of 4,500 hp, Yakovlev M-501 diesel engines with a capacity of 6,000 hp or Klimov VK-2 turboprop engines with a capacity of 5,000 hp. Testing ["blowing"] in a wind tunnel and further calculations revealed the indisputable advantage of the VK-2, and further aircraft design was carried out according to the option with the six-engine configuration with a turboprop power plant.

The IL-26 was a midplane with a straight wing of very large elongation and one large keel in the rear of the fuselage. The crew of the aircraft consisted of twelve people. The aircraft was supposed to have a straight wing area of 475 square meters and a cylindrical fuselage for the most part.

An interesting feature of one of the versions was the chassis design. The huge amount of fuel consumed by the aircraft led to a big difference between take-off and landing weight: this prompted the designers to equip the bomber with auxiliary underwing landing gear that could be dropped after take-off. This allowed to reduce the take-off weight of the aircraft and increase its range. An important feature of the project at a late stage was the hanging tanks with fuel, dropping off after the fuel was used up. This solution made it possible to facilitate the design of the bomber and increase its combat radius. In the case of VK-2 engines, the expected flight range without refueling was to be 11560 km.

The project envisaged a complex of radio equipment, including RSB-70, RSB-5 and RSIU-3 radio stations, an automatic radio compass, Rubidium radar sight, Meridian long-range navigation equipment, the Materik course and glide path system , and other devices.

The bomb compartment allowed holding up to 12,000 kg of bombs, while its volume allowed to load four FAB-3000. The bomb compartment contained one 10,000 kg bomb or four 3,000 kg bombs, as well as a different number of smaller bombs. The aircraft was also supposed to be used as a carrier of nuclear weapons that were then created in the USSR. The defensive armament of the aircraft was to include 10 twin 23-mm Sh-3 cannons located in five remotely controlled installations: two on the upper part of the fuselage, two on the lower and one installation in the tail. The total ammunition of defensive installations is 3,200 shells.

Work on the IL-26 did not advance further than the technical proposals, since the design bureau was engaged in more priority projects, first of the Il-18 transport aircraft, and then the front-line bomber. Due to the rapid progress of the Tupolev Design Bureau on the Tu-85, as well as the production of the transport and passenger Il-18 and the front-line bomber Il-28, all work on the Il-26 was stopped by directive. Work on this project was stopped after the OKB concentrated its main efforts on creating the IL-28 medium-sized jet bomber. The Il-26 was the last strategic bomber project for Ilyushin Design Bureau. Work on strategic bombers since then has become the prerogative of Tupolev and partly Myasishchev.