From 16:00 GMT (8:00 PDT) March 30th to 16:00 GMT (8:00 PDT) March 31st

x1.3 RP gain on IL-2, IL-2M, IL-4, IL-10

Sergey Ilyushin was born on March the 30th 1894 in village of Dilyalevo. Youngest of 11 children in peasant family, Ilyushin rose from a self taught kid to one of most prominent aircraft constructors of his time.

His career started as factory worker from 1910 until he was conscripted in Imperial Russian Army where he served in the infantry and later as a clerk in military administration. When the request came for volunteers to serve in the fledgling Aviation Section he immediately volunteered. He worked first as mechanic and a member of the ground crew but soon, in the summer of 1917 he was qualified as a pilot.

As the war finished he returned to his native village and from there, with the start of the Russian Civil War, in 1919 Ilyushin was drafted into the Red Army where he served as an aviation technician. In the summer of that year he led a team that dismantled a captured Avro 504 biplane which was sent to Moscow where it was reverse engineered into the Soviet U-1 trainer.

His career started in 1921 when he left the army to join the Institute of Engineers of the Red Air Fleet (renamed the Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy) in 1922. Even in his student year he showed his engineering qualities by designing gliders, one of which won first place in a competition in Germany in 1925. He obtained his degree in 1926 and started work on aircraft design in TsAGI, where he worked with Nikolai Nikolaevich Polikarpov and Andrei Tupolev.

In 1933 he became chief of TsKB at Moscow plant named after V.R.Menzhinski which later grew into the Ilyushin OKB in 1935. The most prominent project his bureau made in the war years were the Ilyushin Il-2 ground attacker, Ilyushin Il-4 bomber which were extensively produced and used throughout the second World War. His bureau was responsible for numerous plane designs like DB-2, BD-4, Il-10, Il-28 which were used in the Red Army.

In post war years, the Ilyushin bureau concentrated on civilian and transport aircraft producing planes like the Il-38, Il-76, Il-78 and others.

Ilyushin was given the honorary rank of General-Colonel of Engineering/Technical Service. in 1968 he also became an Academician of USSR Academy of Science. He remained in the position of the chief designer at the Ilyushin OKB until his retirement due to illness in 1970.

From 1937-1970, Ilyushin also served as a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. He died in 1977 in Moscow and was buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery.

War Thunder team