Air and Bread

Hello and welcome back to another Forgotten Hope 2 update.

Today we have a render and screenshots of perhaps the most famous Soviet aircraft of the war: the Ilyushin Il-2.

The most produced military aircraft of all time, the Il-2 started life in 1938 with the design of the TsKB-55 by the team of Sergey Ilyushin. This two seat aircraft incorporated an armoured shell that protected the engine, fuel tank, radiators and crew. To save weight, the armour was a part of the load bearing stucture of the aircraft, but even with this it was overweight. Redesigned as a single seater, and powered with a newer Mikulin AM-38 engine optimised for low altitudes, the Il-2 was accepted into service in March 1941.

The rear gunner returned as an answer to heavy losses to fighters, first as a field improvisation and then in a 1943 redesign. While the rear gun proved effective, the casualty rate for gunners was high, since they were outside the protection of the armour plates. The extra weight also reduced the handling of the aircraft.

In the role of ground attack, the Il-2 was an intimidating prospect. While it suffered from poor bombing accuracy and low bomb load, its armour made it a difficult target to bring down. The accuracy was somewhat improved with PTAB shaped charge bomblets, of which the Il-2 could carry up to 192. These could penetrate the top armour of any tank on the battlefield, and were dropped in the millions.

36,183 Il-2 were produced during the war, and ours was made by Agus, with a cockpit by Fred and Berezin UBT by Agus.

Our winners for this week's screenshot competition is Laboraffe. You can view the winning submission here.

We are now accepting entries for the week of July 7th. If you think you have the best FH2 screenshot, post them here.

That's all for this week, but be sure to come back next time for another update. Until then, feel free to visit our IRC channel, our public forums, and/or our Twitter and Facebook pages to discuss this update and other news.