COBI Ilyushin IL-2 1943 Set 5745

COBI's Il-2 (1943) is a 1:32 model built from 643 blocks, 36.3 cm long with a 46.4 cm wingspan, in winter camouflage with the pale blue underside. The propeller and ailerons move, the wheels fold on rubber tires, and the redesigned canopy opens for a pilot and a gunner figure. A display stand with a plate and mounting points for the figures is included.

The armour is the aeroplane

Most armoured aircraft have steel plates bolted onto a normal airframe. The Il-2 does not. Its forward fuselage is a shell of armour plate up to 12 mm thick, shaped and riveted into a load-bearing structure — the engine, the cooling system, the fuel tank and the pilot all sit inside it, and it is the aircraft, not an addition to it.

Russian crews called it the flying tank, and German troops on the ground called it the Schwarzer Tod. Rifle-calibre fire simply bounced off, and light flak often did too, which is what let it work at a hundred metres over a battlefield where nothing else could survive.

The man in the back seat

The early Il-2 had one seat. That left it defenceless from behind, and the losses were appalling — for a period the average Il-2 survived a handful of sorties.

Units cut second cockpits into the fuselage themselves before the factory version arrived. And when the two-seater was standardised, the armoured shell was not extended: the gunner sat behind it, protected by a canvas strap and a sheet of duralumin. Gunner casualties ran several times higher than pilot casualties in the same aircraft.

Around 36,000 Il-2s were built, more than any other military aircraft in history.

In the COBI range

Set 5744 is the later Il-2M3 in postwar Polish markings, with the swept wing and a different camouflage.

Specifications

Pieces: 643 · Figures: 2, pilot and gunner · Scale: 1:32
Model dimensions: 36.3 × 46.4 × 12.5 cm (14.3 × 18.2 × 4.9 in)