Il-2KR Recon Plane is a Soviet Air unit in Steel Division II.
Background[ | ]
The ultimate incarnation of the armored ground attack plane idea born in the 1930s in the Soviet Union, the Il-2 was designed by Sergey Ilyushin in 1938. Designed from the ground up as an armored assault aircraft, the plane was designed with an armored shell weighing in excess of 700 kg, protecting the crew, engine, radiatiors, and the fuel tank. To save weight, the armor doubled as a loadbearing structure.
The Il-2's design, as a single-engine propeller-driven monoplane with heavy armor and heavy armament prevailed against competing designs from Sukhoi and was pressed into production after being upgraded with a more powerful powerful plant, the Mikulin AM-38, and finally passing trials in April 1941. Its firepower, resilience, and reasonable price tag made it a vital part of the Soviet war effort - so much that Stalin described the Il-2 as being as important to the Red Army as air or bread.
It remained in production until 1945, with 36 183 units produced, and the last units were retired as late as 1954 by Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. Together with its successor, the Il-10, it became the most produced military aircraft in history.
Il-2KR (korrektirovschchik, spotter) was intended as a battlefield spotting and reconnaissance aircraft and had a more powerful radio and a camera. The radio was an RSI-3bis, with the AFA-1 or AFA-1M camera in the rear fuselage. It carried a lighter weapon load: The Volkov-Yartsev VYa-23 23mm autocannon, the ShKAS (Shpitalny-Komaritski Aviatsionny Skorostrelny, Shpitalny-Komaritski rapid fire for aircraft) 7.62mm machine gun, and the Berezin UB (УБ - Универсальный Березина, Berezin's Universal) in a turret configuration, that could be replaced with an additional camera.