Ilyushin Il-4 (DB-3F)
A modification of earlier DB-3 bomber models. Despite being far from the best design as of 1941, these long-range bombers did perform several daring raids on Berlin in the summer of 1941, proving to Germans that their homeland could also suffer from war. Overall, more than 6000 planes of different modifications were built.
Petlyakov Pe-2
A twin-engined Soviet dive bomber, Pe-2 is considered one of the best aircraft models the USSR produced during the war. Its production numbers went over 11 000 units built.
The Pe-2 was designed in a prison design bureau (sharashka); Vladimir Petlyakov (head engineer) had been arrested and imprisoned in 1937 for allegedly delaying design work on the Tupolev ANT-42 bomber. Petlyakov was given the task of designing a high-altitude fighter, which he successfully accomplished. However, operational experience in the Soviet-Finnish War of 1939-1940 showed that this was not what the Soviet Air Force needed, and Lavrentiy Beria, head of the NKVD and of the sharashka system, ordered that the fighter be redesigned as a dive bomber, with the promise that Petlyakov and his colleagues would be released on its successful completion. The resulting aircraft, the Pe-2 proved to be one of the most successful designs of World War II.
Petlyakov was released in 1940, and was awarded a Stalin Prize in 1941. However, at Kazan, Petlyakov faced increasing difficulties, with many of his trained technicians and machinists conscripted into the Soviet military and sent to the front lines, which adversely affected the aircraft production. He protested to Soviet senior leadership, and was on his way to Moscow in January 1942 (flying in a Pe-2), when he died in an air crash near Arzamas.
We will keep posting new units that will appear for the first time in the Strategic Mind series, so stay tuned!
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Starni Games team