14 Facts About Sergey Ilyushin

Sergey Ilyushin designed the Il-2 Shturmovik, which made its maiden flight in 1939.

Sergey Ilyushin worked as a factory laborer, ditch-digger at construction sites, and cleaner of gutters at a dye plant in Saint Petersburg.

The racetrack was the site of the first All-Russia Festival of Ballooning in autumn of 1910, and Sergey Ilyushin assisted in unpacking crates and setting up equipment.

Sergey Ilyushin was able to meet many of Russia's pioneer aviators, an event that awoke his interest in aviation.

Sergey Ilyushin worked at first as a mechanic and member of the ground crew.

In March 1918, with the withdrawal of the Bolshevik government from the war, Sergey Ilyushin was demobilized and sent back to his native village.

Sergey Ilyushin helped supervise the increasing nationalization of factories in the area and in October 1918 joined the Bolshevik Party.

Sergey Ilyushin led a team which dismantled it, and sent it to Moscow where it was reverse-engineered into the U-1 trainer, of which 737 examples were subsequently built.

Sergey Ilyushin obtained a degree in engineering in 1926 and served until November 1931 as an aeroplanes section manager within the Soviet Air Force Scientific-Technical Committee, with involvement in the development of the design requirements for the new aeroplanes of Nikolai Polikarpov and Andrei Tupolev.

Sergey Ilyushin's single-engined Ilyushin Il-2 ground-attack aircraft, the single most-produced combat aircraft design in history, and the Ilyushin Il-4 twin-engined bomber were used extensively in World War II, on all fronts where the Soviets fought.

Sergey Ilyushin became an Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union in 1968.

Sergey Ilyushin remained the chief designer at the Ilyushin OKB until his retirement due to illness in 1970.

From 1937 to 1970 Sergey Ilyushin served as a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union.

Sergey Ilyushin died in 1977 in Moscow and was buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery.