Small arms consisted of four LUKAC machine guns in the center section, one of the same machine gun in the upper turret and another in the lower hatch installation. Both machine guns were served by the navigator, which was not a very good solution, since he could not simultaneously fire from both shooting points.

Su-2 M-87

In addition, in order to save duralumin, the shortage of which began to be felt even before the war, Sukhoi was obliged to design a wooden fuselage for the aircraft. This caused some weighting of the structure, but it was compensated by a significant increase in power supply.

Another major change was the weakening of small arms. In 1940, the Air Force leadership chose the armored BSh-2 (future Il-2) as a promising attack aircraft, and the Su-2 was left in the role of a short-range bomber. Since it was believed that the main thing for such an aircraft was not machine guns, but bombs, two wing LUKACas were removed from it, as well as the hatch installation.

Su-2 M-88

In March 1941, the MV-5 turret, which had almost all-round fire, was replaced by a lightweight and simplified TSS-1 turret with much narrower sectors of fire. It was covered on top with a transparent visor, which had to be moved forward before opening fire. The new machine gun mount provided gains in aerodynamics and a slight increase in speed, but the aircraft's security was further reduced.

Around the same time, in order to further improve the contours of the Su-2, the oil cooler, which previously hung under the hood, was moved to the center section, and the shape of the engine suction pipe was made smoother. An aircraft with such innovations was sometimes called Su-2M (modified).

With the outbreak of war, emergency changes had to be made to the design of the vehicle.

Firstly, the shortage of Il-2s often forced the use of the Su-2 as an attack aircraft. Four machine guns are better than two when shelling ground targets, and therefore already in July 1941, the aircraft began to be produced with four ShKAS in the wings. The MV-5 turret was also returned to its place and the hatch installations began again, since German fighters often attacked from below.

Secondly, air battles showed that the armor protection of the crew, especially the navigator, was absolutely insufficient.

By August, the problem was partially solved by internally installing armor linings on the bottom and sides of the fuselage in the rear cockpit area. The Su-2 M-88 was produced until October 1941; a total of 811 aircraft of this modification were built.

Su-2 M-82

The first two copies of the Su-2 M-82 were built and flown in Kharkov in September 1941, but the deployment of serial production was prevented by the urgent evacuation of aircraft plant No. 135 due to the approach of Nazi troops to the city. In October, the plant was evacuated to Perm, and soon trains with the property of plant No. 207 removed from Dolgoprudny arrived there. Both enterprises were merged into a single complex, leaving number 135 behind, but great difficulties arose with the resumption of production. During the evacuation due to bombing, a significant part of the equipment was lost, and not all of the workers were taken out either.
As a result, it was never possible to achieve normal operation at the new location - only 58 bombers were assembled over several months with great difficulty. There was nothing to help the plant, since there were not enough people and machines for everyone. In January 1942, the Defense Committee, having studied the situation, made an unprecedented decision: to stop production of the Su-2, disband aircraft plant No. 135, and distribute equipment and personnel among other enterprises.

Experimental all-wood aircraft BB-2, built in the spring of 1940. It was considered as a simplified modification of the BB-1 for mass production in conditions of duralumin shortage, but did not go into mass production. In addition to the wooden structure, the BB-2 differed from the BB-1 in improved armor and a modified landing gear retraction scheme. The only copy of the BB-2 crashed during testing and was never restored.

A couple of topics discussing the model, almost 15 pages each, heated debates, categorical statements - a clear sign of the release of a new product from Zvezda. I don’t judge whether this is good or bad, it’s just a pity that in the end there aren’t so many assembled models on the Internet. So I’m correcting this misunderstanding and presenting the second model, assembled as part of GB RedStars 2. Now - a Sukhoi Su-2 light bomber with an M-88B engine.

About the plane itself I won't tell you much. Among people interested in military history, the Su-2 is a fairly well-known vehicle (well, I have no luck with rare prototypes, I have to use this phrase all the time). Partly thanks to the unique, but promoted thoughts of Viktor Suvorov, partly due to the fact that this plane is “lucky” to be used as models in various museums. The truth is that you are lucky only with the quantity of them, but not with the quality. And the release of the Zvezda model contributed to the popularization of this aircraft. As usual, I can refer those thirsty for minimal information about the prototype to the “Corner of the Sky” - http://www.airwar.ru/enc/bww2/su2.html

Model went on sale in November 2013. Another model from Zvezda in 48th scale, like the previous one, developed using 3D design technology.

Zvezda’s drying turned out to be good, although not without its shortcomings. The most noticeable disadvantage of plastic is the hood. Alas, in the drawings of Khazanov/Gordyukov, according to which this model was made, the hood is drawn incorrectly. And if on paper this error is not striking, then on the model the original hood very much resembles a piece of some kind of pipe, due to the almost absent bevel along the leading edge. You will either have to fix this mess by hand, or buy kits from Vector.
I won’t say much about the riveting, which caused various reviews. Yes, it is not ideal and is exaggerated, but it looks fine on the finished model, and was noticeable on the prototype. I associate the idea of ​​filling it with putty or converting it into an external one with some kind of insanity.
Other shortcomings include poor detailing of the cockpit, incorrect landing gear niches (they were sewn up on the sides, as for example on the I-16). All this is done by hand, without much labor. Too little sagging of the canvas, missing jointing lines, lack of tread on the chassis wheels and other little things I don’t take into account, this is too much for the connoisseur and has little effect on appearance the model as a whole.

There was a mistake in Zvezda’s decals, since not a single option, apparently, matches the plastic. The plane with No. 15 was equipped with a TSS-1 turret, which means it had a different engine, the M-88B. And the hood and propeller spinner were also different. There are also big doubts about the car with No. 21, but here we need to do a better job of digging for information.
Well, I'll be honest. The choice for the prototype of not the most widespread and least beautiful modification of Sushka is also surprising. It would be much more logical to make an option with the M-88B. Although who knows, maybe everything is ahead.

From aftermarket Resin kits were purchased from Vector - a conversion with an engine and a hood for an aircraft with an M-88b, control surfaces and ShKAS.

I purchased resin wheels from the Spare Parts Kit.

At the time of assembly, this was almost the entire cash aftermarket.
Now photo-etching has appeared from Eduard and Metallic Details, decals from AML and Behemoth. With these kits, it will be even easier to assemble an excellent model than using the improvised means that I resorted to.

Assembly started with selecting a prototype and dry folding the main parts.
Everything fit together perfectly. Well, my word is true, with this hood it is much more beautiful than in the out-of-the-box version.

The prototype will be decided quickly. I must say that the interior contents depend on its choice (the presence or absence of a walkie-talkie (this is if I understood everything correctly). I must download - I wanted a car with a walkie-talkie, because it looks beautiful. But all the cars with a walkie-talkie had a rather boring color. In the end the choice fell on a car from the 288th bap, without a walkie-talkie, but in a very interesting (and questionable) camouflage... Apparently, it was originally painted differently standard scheme(white washable paint only on the tail), and they painted the entire fuselage with it. Seeing this, the authorities were horrified and ordered the paint to be washed off. As a result, it was washed off, but the translucent coating remained. Moreover, he became dirty white. But the peeling white camouflage remained on the tail and fairings.

But the painting was still ahead, and I started assembling the model from the cockpit. I must say that when working with the interior I found myself in a funny situation. It seems that there is little information on Sushka, and almost no information on cars without a walkie-talkie, but still there is so much stuff stuck on the photographs of the same experimental cars that you don’t know when to stop. In the end, I put it on from the heart. I added a power kit to the wall of the bomb bay and the pilot's cabin, added flight pedals, threw an elevator rod on the left side, added equipment, valves, levers, a bag for maps, steps under the turret and other little things. Some of it is, of course, pure fantasy on the topic, but why should the cabin be empty? I decided to leave the AFA-13 camera, it was too boring on the starboard side without it. They could have installed it to record the results of a raid, for example. I added some equipment to the pilot's cockpit and added just a little bit of wiring to the back wall.

The chair from the set is not suitable at all. Maybe the early vehicles had something like that, but photographs of combat vehicles say that it was taller, had an armored back, etc. Most likely the chair was similar to the SB chair.

As a result, I found a suitable-sized chair cup in the stores, cut out and bent the back from some discount card, and made a pillow from Tamiya two-component putty.

In order not to bother with cutting the radio from its “table”, I simply cut off the fastenings, and cut the “table” itself out of plastic.
On the panel that closes the flight cabin from above, I added wiring to the instrument block, restored the strips on the cylinder that were damaged when cleaning the casting seams, and modified the box for the cartridge strip with a strap for the lid.
The turret also did not escape modification. The original seat is too thick, and in my opinion it is pulled up too high. I cut a new one from the paper of cigarette packs. I also added some kind of (I couldn’t find any signatures for the turret diagram) device on one side and wiring to it. Well, I depicted the bell of the cartridge case. And some kind of wiring.

In addition, I decided to open the lower shooting point. There is little information on it, but we managed to find a photograph where this glass dot is visible on the vehicle with the M-88B. In addition, there are a couple of photographs and one diagram for a Su-2 with an M-82.

It turned out that it was an MV-2 turret, the same one that was installed on the Ar-2 (first photo) and DB-3. There is also very little information on it. So I made a very distant resemblance, since it will be well hidden by the doors. In addition to the turret itself, I made a rod, a “bed” for the shooter, a blank for the machine gun belt and an ammunition box on board.

The solution to the tidy issue was found before me. I decided to combine the original part and the decal. I ground off the thickness, drilled it out, and tried it on the decal. Of course, the decal matches the holes far from perfectly.

I also assembled the engine and made valve lifters from wire. It turned out that I was wrong - the wiring on our M-88s came from the front. But after trying the engine in the hood, I decided not to do it - it wouldn’t be visible anyway. For the engine, I remade the heat-resistant panels on the sides (I putty on the panel that came from nowhere on the left side and made a new one on the right).

At this stage I put everything together to check the fit after modifications.


The next step is the landing gear bays. I sewed up the sides of the niches (of course, based on the same principles as almost all modifications, but it’s like a cat was crying for information on them, and even made them with a mistake, the side in the area of ​​​​the racks goes too far and will not allow the strut of the rack to be removed.)

I cut out the air intakes in the wing, inserted grilles from scraps of etching into them, and drilled out seats for bomb racks and machine gun barrels.

Then I primed and painted the cabin. To be honest, I don’t know how to paint cabins, it turned out boring. Painted with acrylic Mr. Hobby, Vallejo, Star. A little (or a lot) of dry brush, wash, a little dirt. I ruined the decal for the letnab plug - I made a new device out of plastic and transparent film with instruments from stock. I glued the deck, cut into pieces, into the original tidy, and dripped some gloss onto the dials. It's not perfect, but I still can't do it better. In addition, the engine blew out. I decided not to get too fancy with it; anyway, it’s almost invisible. Well, I collected it dry again.




After gluing the wing and fuselage together, I installed Vector steering wheels. True, only ailerons and rudder. I was too lazy to change the elevators, and they are relatively decent in the model. Then he deepened the original jointing and restored the jointing lines forgotten by the model developers.

Since cars with M-88b most often had one headlight, I glued and puttied the headlight on the right wing. And in the niche of the left headlight, I drilled a recess for installing an “elf” headlight. The glass was made from tape. The panel around the headlight is self-adhesive foil. In addition, he also installed machine gun fire tubes.

Made BANO. . I drilled out the relative ones that were jointed (and then only on the lower halves of the wing), glued piles of colored sprue in their place, and sharpened them.

I sealed the seam on the center section (by the way, everything fit together well, without gaps, but there shouldn’t be a seam there, again Zvezda ends up with the same situation as with the Yak-3). I restored the jointing on the fairing, rolled the rivets (I selected the wheel with the required pitch, but the size of the rivets is, of course, smaller than the original holes).

I drilled drainage holes on the sides of the hood and rolled a riveting line.

Improved sight. Strongly based on what was at hand. For some reason I looked at the etched sights from North Star Models when I was drying them with one glass. Well, okay, my sight crosshair is different. Let there be such a compromise solution.

I cut out and glued the masks. The detail that Zvezda gives for open version cabins The binding there is given on both sides, and is also quite complex due to the abundance of rounded edges. Applying it to the inside is something with something. Nothing is visible and unclear. What happened becomes clear only after painting. On the belly I decided to hide the school of the Star with the walls of the cabin and put them under the binding. Well, let the side windows have edging. The turret will be open.


The next step is soil. A couple of small shrinkages of putty along the joints came out on the belly. Reapplied. Corrected several previously unnoticed joints with riveting and jointing. I drilled out the place where the pitot tube was attached and made a new one from foil and a steel tube.



Slightly modified the landing gear doors and struts.

Now it's time painting. First I blew the top into the base.

Next came the turn of winter camouflage. I tried to portray it to the best of my ability. The dirty white coating was caused by thinly diluted paint. Winter kamok - hairspray and white paint, rubbed with a toothbrush and water. Finally I blew Futura under the decals.

Translated the decals. Major stars are family. The star on the tail is from the new Po-2 model from ICM. Now ICM has excellent decals that are transferred without problems) And I inflated 8ku through a stencil. It didn't turn out perfect, but there's nothing to be done about it. The (family) stars shine through a little and on the green they turn crimson; this is not visible in the photo due to the flash.
Did a wash. For green and blue - black, for black - gray.

I paid a little attention to small things. I blew out the chassis parts in a gray and gloss finish (for washing). I also cut out the doors of the lower turret, riveted them and blew them into the interior color from the inside.

It's time to put everything together. I started with the tail landing gear, which had to be repaired (it broke off during painting). I drilled and installed a wire pin. I put the model on its feet. Installed the lower shooting point. I drilled out the mount for the venturi tube, painted it and put it in place. Then I sprayed the model with matte varnish and removed the masks from the cockpit lights (in general it turned out not bad, although flaws did appear in a couple of places). I must say I don’t really like the idea of ​​a Star with a shifted pilot’s canopy molded to the rear. It’s better to make it from separate parts, removing the sliding part if desired, since joining allows it. I installed a tail canopy, slightly smoked the exhaust and machine guns. Hung up bombs. By the way, the FAB-250 itself was taken from Tamievsky

A 1/48 scale model of the Soviet Su-2 bomber from Zvezda went on sale in November 2013. In general, reviews about the model are good. There are some minor shortcomings, but you can turn a blind eye to them if you are not a fan of historical replicas. A noticeable flaw is the irregular shape of the hood

general information

Russian tank T-14 "Armata"

Company manufacturer: Star

Scale: 1/35

Vendor code: 3670

Number of details: 157 pcs

Model Size(mm): 21.80 cm

Appearance and contents of the box

A colored box from Zvezda in the usual color scheme with an illustration of a Su-2 in flight against a background of smoke. Illustration by Zhirnov.

On the side is a table with the required colors for painting and general information.

Thick inside cardboard box. Let's open it. The box is almost completely filled.

Place the contents on a model mat for scale. Included: Sprues (each in a separate bag), clear sprue, decals and instructions.

Model sprues

Includes sprues: A, B, C and sprue D with transparent parts.

Sprue A

Sprue A contains large parts of the aircraft body.

Let's take a closer look. The casting quality is excellent. No flash. The jointing is even. AND A LOT of rivets on the body.

Sprue A

On sprue B there are only airplane wings.

I cannot judge the correct placement of the rivets on the model. But they will certainly look great after washing on the finished model.

Sprue C

There are already many small parts of the model, as well as the pilots of the aircraft.

Sprue D

The clear parts are on sprue D and they look great. The glass is transparent, so it’s scary to even pick it up.

Decals

Decals are given on one piece of paper: instrument panel, Number 15 and Stars of different sizes. There are only 2 coloring options out of the box. For other options, you need to buy additional decals.

Instructions

The instructions are, as usual, black and white in the form of an A3 brochure. To glue 153 Su-2 parts you will have to study 3 spreads. The instructions are quite detailed. But in any case, it is better to study all the stages before assembling the model.

Read the instructions for the Su-2 from Zvezda online:

Additions to the model

There are various additions to the prefabricated model of the Su-2 aircraft

1. Decals Behemoth



2. Color photo-etched Eduard cockpit





3. Photo-etched Exterior Eduard



4. Photo-etched Flaps Eduard





5. Photo-etched Metallic details

Why one of the best lungs bombers of the early 1940s were lost in the shadow of the more famous creations of aircraft designer Pavel Sukhoi

Su-2 short-range bomber with missile guides under the wings. Photo from the site http://www.airwar.ru

The last pre-war five-year plan was the time when the Red Army received one after another the latest designs weapons - the country was preparing for war, which was more and more clearly in the air. This active preparation, half a century later, will become a reason for outright insinuations, amounting to accusing the USSR of preparing for an attack on Germany, and the Su-2 will be given a special place in this stream of lies. They will call him “the winged Genghis Khan,” they will dismantle him to pieces, “prove” his complete technical inconsistency - and then they will announce that they planned to produce him in tens of thousands and assigned the role of the main airborne invasion that was supposedly being prepared.

The reality is much simpler and more down-to-earth than all these inventions of defector scouts. Over the entire existence of the Su-2, it was produced in a small batch: a little less than 900 aircraft - negligible compared to the most popular combat aircraft of all time, the Il-2 attack aircraft. But both, as we remember, were a direct or indirect result of the Ivanov competition. Despite all the excellent ratings from test pilots and combat pilots who had the chance to fly Sukhoi's short-range bomber, he was, figuratively speaking, late to the Great Patriotic War. It was late in the sense that, despite all the progressive design, excellent aerodynamics, well-thought-out cockpit environment and excellent combat qualities, it was an aircraft of no longer relevant tactics. However, it was determined not by the designer, but by the military - and generals, as is known from the catchphrases of Winston Churchill, are always preparing for the last war.

"Ivanov" becomes "Stalin's task"

It took exactly eight months to complete and fly the first prototype of Sukhov’s Ivanov. On August 27, 1937, the chief pilot of TsAGI (it is worth remembering that formally the design team of Pavel Sukhoi still remained in the structure of this institute) Mikhail Gromov lifted into the air a car that had the in-plant index SZ-1 - that is, “Stalin’s assignment, first copy” . As the tester noted at the end of this flight, the machine turned out to be simple and easy to pilot, and had good stability and controllability.

In fact, it was at this moment that it was decided which of the three “Ivanovs” - the brigade of Pavel Sukhoi, the Nikolai Polikarpov Design Bureau or the KhAI team under the leadership of Joseph Neman - would go into production. The fact is that a month before, on July 25, 1937, the Defense Committee under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR approved a plan for experimental aircraft construction for 1937-1938. Among other tasks, there was also a point concerning the Ivanov competition: the three teams left in it were tasked with designing and building Ivanov aircraft with an M-25 engine in four versions - reconnaissance aircraft, attack aircraft, short-range bomber and escort of long-range bombers. And at the same time, a very strict deadline was set for the vehicles to enter state tests - September 1937.

Only Pavel Sukhoi’s brigade met this deadline, even ahead of schedule. For Nikolai Polikarpov, whose design bureau was simultaneously working on several important projects, “Ivanov” found itself in the paddock and by September did not have time for testing. And at the same time, Joseph Neman’s team was bringing their R-10 aircraft, a reconnaissance aircraft that looked very, very similar to Sukhoi’s aircraft, to mass production, and received a formal delay of five months for the delivery of their Ivanov version. Formal, since it was clear that the R-10 would be KhAI’s contribution to the Ivanovo competition - and the place of the short-range bomber would be given to the Sukhoi aircraft.

And then began what usually happens during tests new technology: periodic breakdowns and equipment failures, unsuccessful and emergency landings, rapid depletion of the service life of components and assemblies due to the fact that they have to be “driven” at maximum conditions... Three prototypes of the new aircraft took part in the tests: SZ-1, which followed it SZ -2, which first flew on January 29, 1938, and the last - SZ-3, which made its first flight on November 3, 1938.

Alas, in addition to purely engineering and technical problems, which in fact are not just inevitable, but a necessary part of any tests, since they allow us to identify weak spots design before its launch into production, a purely human factor also intervened in the fate of the future Su-2. The car was built at plant No. 156, where Pavel Sukhoi’s design group formally existed. But the situation was such that the group’s workers had to write a letter to the very top in order to achieve the continuation of the suddenly stalled work on fine-tuning the “Stalin assignments”. Here is a typical quote from this letter, which Vadim Proklov cites in his article “The Su-2 Short-Range Bomber and Its Modifications”: “All these facts have an extremely painful impact on our team. We are confident that our year and a half work was needed by the country and our vehicle is a good contribution to the defense of our Motherland. We have no doubt that this machine is truly adapted for mass production and even surpasses the Vultee machine in its flight-tactical characteristics and production simplicity (meaning the Vultee V-11 attack aircraft, which aircraft designer Sergei Kocherigin brought to serial production under the designation BSh-1. - Author's note), which makes it possible to extremely quickly introduce the machine into series. Therefore, we cannot come to terms with the attitude of the plant management towards our machine and the fate of our team, which is closely connected with it. Plant No. 156, which simultaneously built several heavy and medium-tonnage machines, now suddenly found itself capable of carrying out work on only one medium-tonnage machine, to the detriment of all the others. The Sukhoi Design Bureau is actually deprived of production base at the factory and is even limited in the construction of prototypes of the machines planned for design”...

Su-2: the “ugly duckling” of the pre-war aviation industry

The letter, oddly enough, achieved its goal: work on “ Stalin's task"at plant No. 156 sharply accelerated, and on December 28, 1938, the last prototype of the SZ-3 was transferred to state tests at the Air Force Research Institute. Flights within the framework of these tests, like the previous prototype, SZ-2, were carried out by the Troika in Yevpatoria, and they began on February 3, 1939. And a month and a half later, the People's Commissar of Defense, Marshal Kliment Voroshilov, and the People's Commissar of the Aviation Industry, Mikhail Kaganovich, addressed the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, Vyacheslav Molotov, with a letter in which they noted that “the Ivanov aircraft with the M-87A, in its flight performance and firepower, is significantly superior to similar aircraft consisting of we have in service (R-zet M-34RN and R-10 M-25V). Considering the good performance of the Ivanov aircraft with<двигателем>M-87A, we ask permission to accept it into service with the Red Army and organize mass production aircraft data at the Sarcombine plant" (quoted from the article "Su-2 short-range bomber and its modifications").

The same letter noted that “the design of the aircraft being tested is all-metal. Production aircraft will be produced with a wooden fuselage, with a subsequent transition in series to a wooden wing with a steel spar...” This was a fundamental point: as with previous aircraft designed by Pavel Sukhoi, a paradoxical situation arose with the future Su-2 when a modern aircraft was forced to “age” for economic reasons, since there was not enough chain mail in the country for the serial production of such all-metal machines.

However, it was not difficult to predict such an outcome not only for economic reasons. Let us remember: based on the results of the first stage of the Ivanov competition, developers of three versions of the new aircraft were appointed: all-metal (Pavel Sukhoi), mixed design (Nikolai Polikarpov) and wooden (Iosif Neman). Almost certainly, initially it was the mixed version, as the most economically and technologically justified, that was considered as the main one, as evidenced by the appointment of a much more eminent designer in charge of it. But when someone else became the winner, it was he who had to remake his plane to suit the needs and capabilities of the domestic aviation industry. So the Su-2 repeated the fate of the I-14 - although not in everything, fortunately.

But what was unfortunately there was a choice production capacity for the release of an aircraft that has already received the serial designation BB-1, that is, the first short-range bomber. Pavel Sukhoi's group, which formed an independent design bureau, unlike most other aircraft design bureaus Soviet Union, at first did not have its own industrial base. And its aircraft were assigned to two factories: Kharkov No. 135 (where Pavel Sukhoi took over as chief designer to speed up the construction process) and Sarcombine. But despite the threatening instructions from Moscow, neither there nor there took the new car seriously, which ultimately became the reason for a serious conversation at the top. It ended with a strange decision for Pavel Sukhoi and his design bureau: all production was transferred to the newly created plant on the basis of KB-29 of the People's Commissariat of Aviation Industry in Podlipki (present-day Korolev) near Moscow, which was assigned No. 289 and at which Sukhoi took the position of chief designer. The task of the new plant was to build two prototype aircraft and 10-15 zero-series aircraft over the next year.

But neither this decision, nor the orders of the new People's Commissar of the Aviation Industry, Alexei Shakhurin, issued at the beginning of 1940 on the urgent deployment of serial production of short-range BB-1 bombers at three factories at once - in Kharkov, Taganrog and Dolgoprudny - led to any radical change in the situation. The factories chosen in charge objectively could not cope with the task of producing aircraft whose design features were an order of magnitude higher than the technological capabilities of production. After all, Pavel Sukhoi created a machine in the design of which extruded profiles, stamped and cast power units made of aluminum alloys, flexible textolite were widely used... The creator of the Su-2 also took care of the possibility of mass production continuous production, having decided to use the plaza-template method to ensure the interchangeability of structural elements - but the leadership of the aviation industry never found the opportunity to place the production of BB-1 at one of the leading aircraft factories in the country. And everyone else simply could not fully cope with the task assigned to them.

The army is trying "drying"

All this ultimately led to the fact that only in May 1940 - just a year before the start of the Great Patriotic War! - the military from the specially created bomber air regiment No. 135 (according to the number of the plant that produced the vehicles) accepted and began to test the first 16 production BB-1s. The results of military tests turned out to be very successful: despite the discovered shortcomings and weaknesses of individual components of the aircraft (which is natural for any new equipment), the pilots noted good review forward from the cockpit and a convenient high control stick, they said that the aircraft is easy to operate, it is convenient for technicians to maintain it, since they have convenient access to all units, and therefore repair and replacement of parts do not present any difficulties.

“Pilots who had below average qualifications, who came to the unit from Air Force flight schools, mastered the aircraft easily and after 20-25 export flights they independently graduated on the BB-1,” said the report on military tests. The ease of mastering the new aircraft was also influenced by another innovation of Pavel Sukhoi: from the very beginning he designed a duplicate control system for the BB-1, assuming that in a combat situation the navigator might need to replace a wounded or dead pilot. This foresight, already during the war, made it possible to preserve and bring to its airfield more than a dozen heavily damaged Su-2s (and the absence of such a system on the Il-2 caused the death of many attack aircraft, in which the surviving gunner-radio operator could not take over control instead of the pilot). In the meantime, in the pre-war months, such a dual control system allowed pilots to train directly on the equipment they would fly in the future, without the use of special training machines.

As is usually the case, military tests brought not only positive feedback, but also comments and suggestions for fine-tuning certain components and assemblies of the vehicle. This also took considerable time, and in the end widespread implementation Su-2 - this is how the BB-1 began to be officially called in December 1940 - began in combat units only in January 1941. And all the same, even when the war was already in full swing, the Sukhoi Design Bureau, together with its subcontractors and production workers, continued to fine-tune and test new modifications of the aircraft - they were looking for the best options.

Unfortunately, even the most outstanding of them could no longer meet the strict and stringent requirements that the Great Patriotic War imposed on aviation technology. Slow-moving (speed within 430-480 km/h), not very well armed (only three 7.62 mm machine guns), with a small bomb load (400 kg), the Su-2 could no longer carry out the tasks that were originally assigned to him. The duties of an attack aircraft were successfully performed by the Il-2, a bomber by the Pe-2 and other twin-engine bombers, a reconnaissance aircraft by many serial fighters... Even the niche of a low-speed night bomber was occupied by the U-2, which took advantage of its mass production and extreme ease of control, surpassing even the Su-2.

And yet, this short-range bomber managed to say its weighty word in the history of the Great Patriotic War. Like, indeed, many other types of weapons of the Red Army, with which it met the war and which quickly became obsolete during its first months. The TB-3 bombers and I-16, BT-7 and T-28 fighters that seemed formidable at parades were all from the “last war.” But the people who controlled them were from this group - and they did everything to give the enemy such a rebuff, which he never expected, even with these outdated, clumsy, weak weapons.

By June 22, 1941, the vast majority of Su-2 bombers were concentrated in the western military districts. According to Nikolai Gordyukov and Dmitry Khazanov, by June 1, military representatives accepted a total of 413 bombers, of which 64 “dryers” were listed in the Western Special Military District, 91 in the Kiev Special Military District, 22 in the Odessa Special Military District, and 124 bombers in the Kharkov Special Military District. Another 85 vehicles had already been accepted, but were defended at factory airfields, and seven were listed in training center. The remaining aircraft were either en route to their destination or were written off as a result of flight accidents.

According to reports, the Su-2 production plan for this period was fulfilled by 119%, and by the end of the year the Red Army was to receive over 700 more vehicles. The training of pilots and flight navigators (as navigators of this type of aircraft were often called at that time) for the new bombers was also progressing at an accelerated pace. But their training was designed for a period until September, or even longer. Therefore, it is not surprising that, according to Nikolai Gordyukov and Dmitry Khazanov, by the beginning of the war, out of 82 short-range bomber air regiments of the Red Army Air Force, eight had mastered the Su-2 to one degree or another and two more did not have time to receive the vehicles from the factories, but were planning to The retraining process will begin soon. Moreover, all 195 bombers located near the border (of which only 132 were operational) were located south of the 55th parallel, that is, they mainly covered the borders of Belarus and Ukraine - right up to the Black Sea. There they met the war.

Airplane for heroes

From the first days, the Su-2, in addition to its purely bomber duties, also carried out tasks of attacking the advancing enemy, and escorting long-range bombers, and were reconnaissance aircraft - in short, anything. And of course, they suffered and suffered losses: the German pilots, many of whom had already had more than one military campaign behind them by that time, had little to oppose to the hastily retrained crews of the Sushki. However, even this little was enough to not only carry out the mission of bombing the enemy, but also cause damage to the Luftwaffe. In particular, the report of the headquarters of the 97th Air Regiment, which at the end of June 1941 had to be moved to the rear for reorganization due to loss of combat capability, spoke of 14 German fighters shot down.

The fact that the Su-2 turned out to be capable of conducting full-fledged air battles and successfully resisting Messerschmitts is stated in documents from other air regiments armed with this machine at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. For this purpose, sometimes their crews used such a rare species air combat like a battering ram. In particular, the Su-2 is famous for the fact that it was on it that the only woman in the entire history of combat carried out her ramming - the deputy squadron commander of the 135th Bomber Aviation Regiment of the Southwestern Front, Senior Lieutenant Ekaterina Zelenko (read more about this in articles and). At least two examples are known when the crews of Su-2 aircraft repeated the feat of Captain Nikolai Gastello: a Winter War veteran who served in the 43rd Bomber Aviation Regiment, Captain Alexander Avdeev, directed a burning plane at enemy vehicles with infantry approaching the Bolshiye Sitsy airfield, and the commander of squadron 209 of the 1st Bomber Aviation Regiment, Captain Hassan Mamin - in the midst of enemy aircraft at the Borovskaya airfield.

At the same time, the appearance of new short-range bombers in the Red Army's armament turned out to be a clear surprise not only for the German troops, but also for the Soviet ones. The fact is that sometimes even their neighbors in military camps did not know about the appearance of the Su-2 in air units: the rearmament of the Su-2 was carried out in an atmosphere of increased secrecy. And sometimes this played a very tragic role in the fate of their crews.

For example, the future air marshal, Hero of the Soviet Union, recalled many years after the war: “It also happened: we were going on a mission, two MiG-3s were attached to us. We think it’s safer to fly with fighters. Suddenly the incredible happens - one of the MiGs shoots down the commander of our squadron and attacks my plane. I rock the car from wing to wing, showing our identification marks. That helped…
Many years later, when I was studying at the Academy of the General Staff, I told my classmates about this incident. Three times Hero of the Soviet Union Alexander Pokryshkin studied in our group. He asked me to repeat the story.
I told it again.
“It was me,” he said, embarrassed and upset.
“Are you kidding, Sasha?”
“What kind of “kidding” are you saying! At the beginning of the war, I actually shot down a Su-2. I had such a terrible incident, I didn’t know Sukhoi’s planes, because they appeared in units just before the war, and they looked completely unusual - I thought they were a fascist...”

This tragic episode almost cost the future ace Alexander Pokryshkin his career, if not his life, but in the turmoil of the mass retreat it turned out okay. It is possible that such episodes were not isolated, but we did not know about the rest and will never know, since their participants died long before the end of the war.

Short Fate, Eternal Glory

How good the Su-2 turned out to be can be judged by its very wide use as not only a short-range bomber, but also an attack aircraft - a role for which it was prepared, but for which it was “undertrained.” It is the inability of the Sushki to attack that explains the fact of their extremely high losses in the first months of the war and the fact that the Soviet Air Force specialists who studied this sad experience clearly came to the conclusion that the BB-1 was the worst prepared for combat operations. And at the same time, it was extremely tenacious: in some regiments that managed to restructure the tactics of using the Su-2 in time, one loss of these aircraft occurred per 80 sorties - four or even five times less than, say, the Pe-2. 2! On average, according to statistics, the losses of the “dryers” were one and a half times less than the usual irretrievable combat losses for Soviet bomber aviation.

And yet there were too few of them, tenacious, nimble, capable of playing many Su-2 aviation roles. By the fall of 1942, along the entire length of the Soviet-German front, there were only two regiments armed with these vehicles. Surviving units from other units gradually flowed into them, which were withdrawn for reorganization and received new aircraft: some - Il-2, some - Pe-2 or other bombers. And the “dryers” continued to be collected from the places of forced landings, repaired using spare parts removed from downed vehicles that could not be repaired - and returned to service.

The last of them, already as reconnaissance officers and artillery spotters, continued combat missions until 1944, until they were finally written off due to extreme wear and tear and lack of repair kits. And this despite the fact that production of the Su-2 was finally stopped on January 24, 1942! That is, for another two years, aircraft that were no longer produced or accepted by military representatives continued to fly, fight, strike the enemy - and enjoy the sincere, ardent love of their crews.

Hot in the literal sense of the word: in addition to all the other amenities and remarkable features of the Su-2, the pilots especially noted the cabin heating system, which received hot air from the engine. This turned out to be especially important in the first war winter, when the “sushi” were still quite actively fighting at the front, and their pilots had to make several sorties a day in the bitter cold, which only grew stronger as they gained altitude. It’s hard to even imagine how envious the pilots of other, unheated planes were of them. But neither the laudatory reviews of combat pilots nor high performance survivability could not influence the desire of the warring country to reduce the range of aircraft in service and, accordingly, the efforts and costs of training pilots for them and providing aircraft with repair kits and spare parts.

And yet, the Su-2 had the happy fate of a soldier who fulfilled his duty, as they say, to the last drop of blood. In the entire vast space where the battles of the Great Patriotic War once rumbled, there is not a single monument where this aircraft would be installed, and not a single museum where it is exhibited. All Su-2s passed their combat path with dignity - and went to ground next to their pilots and their fellow soldiers in the Black Sea region, the Don steppes or Belarusian swamps...