UGLY AF Hunchbacked Soviet Attack AIrcraft

This is a strategic Soviet design; the purpose is to instill sadness and hopelessness into the crew before they even get in the aircraft. By the time they take off they have become so emotionally drained and feel nothing but melancholy so they hardly care if they live. This allows them to perform fearlessly like robots.

To the enemy on the ground this aircraft instills paralyzing fear because the assumption is that anyone flying in this machine must intend on making a suicide/kamikaze attack.

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cstross@reddit

Disagree: it's the result of the intelligence take from a KGB agent who went rummaging through the rejected plans archives at Fairey or maybe Blackburn in the UK, circa 1942.

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Concentrate_Flaky@reddit

Hey, don't slander the Gannet like the. It actually worked unlike this thing XD

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Radioactive_Tuber57@reddit

Haha! They’re so ugly they loop back to the sort of cute side. The Blackburn actually looks OK to me once you close things up and retract the radome.

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dv666@reddit

"We hate this airplane! And when we're done this strafing run, you will too!"

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IronWarhorses@reddit (OP)

actually one of the reasons it was rejected was pilot safety concerns: "Another concern was the close placement of the cockpit to the propeller; this was believed to increase the risk to the pilot if he had to bail out or make a belly landing—in which case the bent propeller blades might hit the canopy.^(")

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mbericom@reddit

Oh good, I thought it was because of the cannon shooting through the rudder. ;)

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bombaer@reddit

Well, the jet powered alternative was not much nicer. Or better : IL-40 (second prototype)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilyushin_Il-40

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IronBallsMcGinty@reddit

So, to hell with CAS, let's just nuke them?

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fart_huffington@reddit

Saw a YouTube about Soviet urban warfare tactics recently and literally the first thing they said was "nukes help"

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IronBallsMcGinty@reddit

That was always our concern if the Pact rolled through the Fulda Gap. Nukes or chem/bio weapons.

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psunavy03@reddit

Remote control turret . . . auto-depressing cannon to avoid flying a proper strafing pattern . . . this is a one-aircraft rebuttal to the idea that the Russians never overengineered anything.

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couplingrhino@reddit

They just seized the opportunity to make everything else about it auto-depressing too.

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fart_huffington@reddit

That's just the natural state of being in the USSR

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IronWarhorses@reddit (OP)

to be fair, they only built one it it was immediately rejected.

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BassKitty305017@reddit

That shade of olive drab isn’t doing it any favors either. I’ll bet a friggin’ Mustang would look heavy & slow in that livery.

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AdScary1757@reddit

I like it.

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HanjiZoe03@reddit

Looks like one of those cartoony proportioned vehicles you'd see in some cartoons, like you'd see in a Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs.

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moldyjim@reddit

A VISUAL attack aircraft.

My eyes hurt just glancing at it.

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Trick-Albatross-3014@reddit

Looks like a deformed fly caused by nuclear waste…

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Recent_Bank_2714@reddit

It's a cyber truck with wings

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wolftick@reddit

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilyushin_Il-20_(1948)

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BlacksmithNZ@reddit

TIL this is real, at least a prototype/ proposal

Pretty much one look at the drawing tells you this is not going to be a good aircraft

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Radioactive_Tuber57@reddit

Looks Photoshopped? No pilot, port side windows opaque. Never went into production.

Questions: 1) based on the exhaust shown, was this a turboprop? 2) Was it a tail dragger? Wikipedia entry sketch shows no landing gear and a V-12 engine with exhaust stacks on the port side.

And: I think there’s a small general aviation version of this in England/Europe with a pusher prop and twin booms. Pilot sits high up top, passengers below and behind. I sure hope there’s a model out there of this chonky beast! Maybe I’ll buy some balsa and cobble one together.

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scorpiodude64@reddit

It might just be a poor colorization and that's why the windows seem opaque. It's not a turboprop either, it uses a V-12.

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AnActualTroll@reddit

Eh, everything weird about the design makes sense given the specific role it was intended for. Definitely possible it would have turned out to be a dud, but it doesn’t seem like an inherently bad concept for a CAS focused airplane. But ultimately, the piston engined close air support aircraft was approaching obsolescence by the post WWII era, so either you’d be fighting a peer opponent who have a comparable Air Force with jet fighters, in which case this could be 10x better than an IL-2 and it’ll still get eaten alive, or you’d be fighting a weaker opponent and have air superiority in which case an IL-2 would have worked just fine.

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Rich_Razzmatazz_112@reddit

I agree. It is the poster child for Unlovely, the musical* but since I'm presuming part of the added structure in front was about protection and the view over the nose is mitigated... 🤷

Maybe this with a PT-6? 🤔

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WoodenNichols@reddit

I'll go see it.

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Gaping_Maw@reddit

Skyraider disagrees

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Modo44@reddit

Meet the Duck.

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WoodenNichols@reddit

When I first saw the OP picture, my first two thoughts were (1) gd that's ugly; (2) gotta be an Ilyushin design.

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FrozenSeas@reddit

[Working link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilyushin_Il-20_(1948)).

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CreeepyUncle@reddit

The plane no one posed beside.

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Shankar_0@reddit

This is Ghibli-ready

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Ghost_of_Nellie_Fox@reddit

I like it!

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VokshodSpecialist@reddit

yeah, i agree, this plane is ugly af

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DryCrab7868@reddit

Usually the soviet made great soviet jets design but this ugliest plane i ever lay my eyes i need bleach after seeing this

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Longjumping-Dog9476@reddit

Looks like an english aircraft

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Scared_Ad3355@reddit

Mmmm, I see why you say that but this is much, much uglier than anything the Brit’s have come up with.

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Chrissthom@reddit

The Fairey Gannet would like to have a word with you.

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BigD1970@reddit

The Short Seamew laughs at your Fairy Gannet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_Sturgeon#/media/File:Sturgeon_SB3.jpg ...laughs, then goes off to cry into the corner, full of self-loathing.

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Radioactive_Tuber57@reddit

It actually looks great in the last photo without all that far too utilitarian radome stuff hanging off the front.

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Chrissthom@reddit

Well played sir. While you did send a picture of a variant of the Short Sturgeon, I'll be damned if it didn't whack every beam in The Ugly Hangar.

Looking up the Short Seamew and it appears we have come full circle back to the scrawny cousin of the Il-20.

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Chupathingamajob@reddit

Don’t you do the Gannett dirty like that

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Chrissthom@reddit

The only way to do the Gannett dirty would be to give it a mirror.

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KDHD_@reddit

Good heavens

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BlockOfASeagull@reddit

Drawing an airplane at 4 years old

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dgcoleman@reddit

It looks like a turd with a nipple.

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DaphniaDuck@reddit

It's a Yermommakov Mi-lf 6.

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IronWarhorses@reddit (OP)

A WHAT??

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pezaf@reddit

Ahhh looks like this screenshot from World of Warplanes is making the rounds again. The IL-20 was a tank in that game

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ClearAirTurbulence3D@reddit

The Russians also made the Tu-91 They took this design, s t r e t c h e d it, threw in a turboprop and counter rotating propellers.

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ArtoriusBravo@reddit

IL 2²

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GoredonTheDestroyer@reddit

I'm pretty sure that's a photoshopped IL-2.

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I_am_BrokenCog@reddit

yes and no.

It IS a prototype, but this image is also photoshopped. notice the cockpit windows are white? and no crew?

Likely it was taken from an image of the plane on the ground. The prop was blurred, the landing gear removed and Viola ... she's airborne.

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FoxWithTophat@reddit

I think this might actually be a screenshot from a game, World of Warplanes

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I_am_BrokenCog@reddit

you know that was my first thought ... but I didn't think a game would have such a bad cockpit / background color mismatch ... could be though for sure.

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Dieselkopter@reddit

aerodynamics of a wall unit.

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Snoo_44245@reddit

Hard to shoot down if you cantnstop laughing.

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blastcat4@reddit

Looks like a plane that Hayao Miyazaki could've taken insipiration from.

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im-a-limo-driver@reddit

Still not big enough to fit Putin's mom inside

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isaac32767@reddit

Found a pretty good video about the thinking behind this design. Actually a kind of logical progression from its predecessors that turned out to be unworkable when the flight-tested it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiiBf4PTdq0

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Cetophile@reddit

IN Britain, Shorts, Blackburn, AND Fairey are all saying, "DAMN."

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Dramatic_Mulberry274@reddit

Pilot (cowboy) riding that engine between his legs! The designers had the wrong kind of vision.

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enigmaunbound@reddit

Just wanted to feel the power between my legs brother...

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OrganizationPutrid68@reddit

Dunce Cap of aviation. "No, Vasily, we are not going to ground you for your infractions... we have a special aircraft that you shall fly..."

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BloodAndSand44@reddit

That’s FUGLY.

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Stegasaurus_Wrecks@reddit

Kinda looks like a Short Seamew.

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azmyth@reddit

I tried to research if there was any connection in their development and as far as I can tell (I'm not an expert or historian), there doesn't seem to be any. The Seamew first flew 7 years later, so presumably the designer took one look at the IL-20 and decided to make something similar. I guess anti-submarine warfare doesn't require airspeed, so propellers were fine.

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Warmind_3@reddit

It's so ugly it wraps around to being super cool

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rain_girl2@reddit

Designed that way so the pilot could have superior visibility over the nose. It was gonna be a ground striker. The wing mounted guns could depressed so it could shoot down while flying level, it would also make the vehicle somewhat shorter in length.

Problems came up when they started doubting the ability for the plane to belly land as it would bend the propeller backwards and could easily hit the cockpit.

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Gowor@reddit

Can't hit what you can't look at.

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badbatch@reddit

Yuck. This is awful.

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Titan5115@reddit

New ugliest plane in history just dropped.

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Hot-Calendar5290@reddit

fairey gannet at home

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LeroyoJenkins@reddit

Porco Rosso enters the room...

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kindafunnymostlysad@reddit

It's curious that the game screenshot has the exhaust behind the wing but the drawings linked in the comments show a traditional exhaust setup beside the engine.

Either way I guess a side benefit would be that the pilot would be nice and warm with the cockpit right above the engine. Good for those cold Russian winters.

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Thebraincellisorange@reddit

wow. this is super special.

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DonTaddeo@reddit

The M-47 engine was probably the most powerful V12 to fly in an aircraft with the exception of a few specially boosted racing engines. Though probably it was too ambitious given its problems.

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IronWarhorses@reddit (OP)

oh that's why its so damn big up front.

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IronWarhorses@reddit (OP)

wow...this thing had Anti Fighter mines!: "A cassette of ten AG-2 aerial grenades was provided to deter any fighters approaching from below." didn't they do that in James Bond?

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