DB-3/IL-4 and its modifications. Torpedo -bearer and the basis of long -range aviation. Kotelnikov V.P.

August 7, 1941 15 DB-3 bombers took off from the Estonian Island of Ezel (Saarema) heading for Berlin, which was about four hours of summer... The sea pilots of the 1st Minor Aviation Regiment of the Baltic Fleet Air Force were the first to apply bomb A blow to the capital of the Third Reich.

dB-3, renamed in 1942 in IL-4, became the basis of Soviet-acting Soviet aircraft and the fleet mine-torpedo aviation. These legendary aircraft participated in three wars - having baptized combat baptism in 1939 in China, then “worked” on the Finnish military facilities, bombed Berlin, Bucharest and Budapest, and hunted German ships. Already on June 22, they raided Koenigsberg, but most of the DB-3 crews at the beginning of the war concerned the blows of the clusters of troops in the near rear of the Nazis. These bombers inflicted significant damage to the advancing Wehrmacht, acting as they were going to use them before the war - during the day, in large groups, in dense system and in large (almost at the practical ceiling) heights. But DB-3 could not have been, it was not in vain that they called the “illegitimate”: the close bomber created as a high-speed, but the losing Tupolev SB, Ilyushin’s plane unexpectedly occupied another niche-a distant bombarder and a torpedo bombing (it was on him that the heroes of the cult film “Torpedo-bearers fought. ").

The book of the leading historian of aviation is the most complete and authoritative study of the creation, modifications and combat use of one of the best aircraft of the Second World War, richly illustrated by rare photographs and schemes.