A couple of topics with a discussion of the model, almost 15 pages each, heated debates, categorical statements - a clear sign of the release of new items from Zvezda. I don’t judge whether this is good or bad, it’s only a pity that as a result there are not so many assembled models on the network. So I'm correcting this misunderstanding and exhibiting the second model assembled within the RedStars 2 GB. Now it's a Sukhoi Su-2 light bomber with an M-88B engine.

About the plane itself I won't tell much. Among people interested in military history, the Su-2 is a fairly well-known machine (well, I'm not lucky for rare prototypes, I have to use this phrase all the time). Partly due to the peculiar, but well-publicized reflections of Viktor Suvorov, partly due to the fact that this aircraft is "lucky" for models in various museums. The truth is lucky only with the quantity of these, but not with the quality. Yes, and the release of the Zvezda model contributed to the popularization of this aircraft. As usual, those who are thirsty for minimal information about the prototype can be referred 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 flaws. To the shortcomings of plastic, which are most striking, I will attribute 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 native hood very much resembles a piece of some kind of pipe, due to the almost absent bevel along the leading edge. This cant will either have to be ruled by hand, or buy sets from Vector.
I won't say much about the riveting, which caused various reviews. Yes, it is not perfect and exaggerated, but it looks normal on the finished model, and was noticeable on the prototype. Ideas to putty it or convert it into an external one are associated with some kind of insanity.
Other jambs include poor cockpit detailing, incorrect chassis niches (they were sewn up on the sides, as, for example, on the I-16). All this is done by hand, without much effort. I don’t take into account too weak sagging of the canvas, missing stitching lines, lack of tread on the chassis wheels and other trifles, this is too much for the connoisseur and has little effect on appearance models in general.

A jamb crept into the decals of Zvezda, since none of the options, apparently, matches the plastic. The aircraft from No. 15 was equipped with a TSS-1 turret, which means that it had a different engine, the M-88B. And the hood with spinner was also different. There are also big doubts about the car with No. 21, but here we need to dig better for information.
Well, I'll be honest. The choice for the prototype of not the most massive and not the most beautiful modification of Drying 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 M-88b aircraft, control surfaces and ShKASs.

I purchased resin wheels from the Spare Parts Kit.

At the time of assembly, this was almost the entire aftermarket available.
Now there is photo-etching from Eduard and Metallic Details, decals from AML and Behemoth. With these kits, it will be even easier to assemble a great model than using the tools at hand that I resorted to.

Assembly started with choosing a prototype and laying the main parts dry.
Everything connected perfectly. Well, the right word, with this hood it is much more beautiful than in the out-of-box version.

The prototype will be determined quickly. I must say that the filling of the interior depends on his choice (the presence or absence of a walkie-talkie (if I understood everything correctly). I need to download it - I wanted a car with a walkie-talkie, because it looks beautiful. But all cars with a walkie-talkie carried a rather boring color. As a result the choice fell on a car from the 288th bap, without a radio, but in a very interesting (and questionable) camouflage... Apparently, it was originally painted not according to the standard scheme (white washable paint only on the tail), but the entire fuselage was painted with it "When the authorities saw this, they were horrified and ordered to wash off the paint. As a result, it was washed off, but the translucent coating remained. Moreover, it became dirty white. But on the tail and on the fairings there was a peeling white camouflage.

But the painting was still ahead, and I started to assemble the model from the cockpit. I must say that when working with the interior, I got into a funny position. It seems that there is little information on Drying, and there is almost no information on cars without a walkie-talkie, but all the same, there are so many things stuck in the photographs of the same experimental machines that you don’t know when to stand. In the end, I poured it from the heart. I added a power pack to the wall of the bomb bay and the pilot's cockpit, added letnab pedals, threw the elevator rod on the left side, added equipment, valves, levers, a bag for maps, steps under the turret and other little things. Of course, part of it is purely a fantasy on the topic, but why should the cabin be empty. I decided to leave the AFA-13 camera, without it it would be too boring on the starboard side. They could have put it to fix the results of a raid, for example. In the cockpit, I added equipment, threw quite a bit of wiring at the rear wall.

The chair from the set does not fit at all. Maybe there was something like that on early vehicles, but photos of military vehicles say that it was taller, had an armored back, and so on. Most likely the chair was similar to the SB chair.

As a result, I found a chair cup of a suitable size in stocks, cut out and bent the back from some discount card, and blinded a pillow from Tamiya two-component putty.

In order not to bother with cutting out the radio from its "table", I simply cut off the fasteners, and the "table" itself was cut out of plastic.
On the panel, the letnaba closing the cabin from above added wiring to the instrument cluster, restored the tapes on the cylinder damaged during cleaning of the molding seams, and diversified the box for the cartridge belt with a strap for the cover.
The turret also did not escape refinement. The original seat is too thick, and, in my opinion, too high up. I cut out a new one from the paper of cigarette packs. I also added some (did not find signatures for the turret circuit) device on one side and wiring to it. Well, he depicted the socket of the gilzbros. And some wiring.

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

It turned out that it was the MV-2 turret, the same as was placed on the Ar-2 (first photo) and DB-3. There is also very little information on it. So I made a very distant likeness, since it will be well hidden by the doors. In addition to the turret itself, I made a thrust, a "bed" for the shooter, a blank for a machine-gun belt and a cartridge box on board.

The solution to the issue with tidy found before me. I decided to combine the original part and the decal. I sharpened the thickness, drilled it, tried it on the decal. Of course, the decal does not match the holes perfectly.

I also assembled the engine, made valve lifters from wire. It turned out that I was wrong - the wiring on our M-88s went in front. But having tried on the engine in the hood, I decided not to do it - it will not be visible anyway. Under the motor, I remade the heat-resistant panels on the sides (I puttied 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 compatibility after improvements.


The next step is the chassis niches. I sewed up the sides of the niches (of course, based on the motives, like almost all the improvements, but the cat cried for information on them, and even made them with a mistake, the side in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe racks goes too far and will not let the brace of the rack get out.)

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

Then 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 a dry brush, a wash, a bit of dirt. I ruined the decal for the letnab cork - I made a new tidy out of plastic and a transparent film with devices from stocks. I glued the deck cut into pieces into my native tidy, dripped gloss into the dials. Not perfect, but I can't do better anyway. In addition, the engine blew out. With him, I decided not to exaggerate too much, all the same, it is almost invisible. Well, again collected dry.




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

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

Made BANO. . I drilled out the relatives that go with the jointing (and then only on the lower halves of the wing), glued heaps of colored sprues in their place, and turned them.

I closed the seam on the center section (by the way, everything joined well, without gaps, but there should not be a seam, again Zvezda has the same situation as with the Yak-3). I restored the stitching on the fairing, dashed off the riveting (I picked up the wheel with the desired pitch, but the size of the riveting is of course smaller than the native holes).

On the hood, I drilled drainage holes on the sides and dashed off a riveting line.

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

Cut and pasted masks. Especially a lot of trouble brought the detail that the Star gives for open version cabins. The binding there is given on both sides, and even quite complex due to the abundance of rounded edges. Putting it on the inside is something with something. Nothing is visible or incomprehensible. What happened becomes clear only after painting. On the belly, I decided to hide the Zvezda jamb with the cabin walls and put them under the cover. Well, let the side windows be with edging. The turret will be open.


The next step is soil. On the belly, a couple of small shrinkages of putty came out at the joints. Re-applied. Corrected several previously unnoticed kosyachkov with riveting and jointing. I drilled out the pitot tube attachment point and made a new one from foil and steel tube.



A bit modified chassis doors and racks.

The turn has come 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. Dirty-white plaque puffed up with liquid diluted paint. Winter camouflage - hairspray and white paint rubbed with a toothbrush and water. At the end, I blew Futura under the decals.

Translated decals. Large stars are native. The star on the tail is from the new Po-2 model from ICM. Now ICM has excellent decals, which are translated without problems) And 8ku inflated through a stencil. It didn't turn out perfect, but there's nothing to be done about it. The stars (native ones) are a little translucent and on green they have gone to raspberry, this is not visible in the photo due to the flash.
Made a flush. On green and blue - black, on black - gray.

Paid a lot of attention to the little things. I blew out the chassis parts in gray and glossy turn (under the wash). I also cut out the wings of the lower turret, riveted and blew it 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). Drilled and installed a wire pin. Put the model on its feet. Set the lower shooting point. I drilled a venturi mount, painted it and put it in place. Then he blew out the model with matte varnish, 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 with the rear part. It is better to do it from separate parts, removing the sliding part if desired, since docking allows. I installed a tail bano, smoked the exhaust and machine guns a little. He hung bombs. By the way, they took the FAB-250 from Tamievsky

Why is one of best lungs bombers of the early 1940s was lost in the shadow of the more famous creations of the 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 latest designs armaments - the country was preparing for a war, which smelled more and more distinctly in the air. This active preparation in half a century will become an occasion for frank 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 flow of lies. They will call him the “winged Genghis Khan”, take him to pieces, “prove” complete technical inconsistency - and immediately announce that they planned to release him in tens of thousands and assigned the role of the main air invasion supposedly being prepared.

The reality is much simpler and more mundane than all these fictions of intelligence defectors. For 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 massive 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 marks of test pilots, and even combatant pilots who had a chance to fly on a near Sukhoi bomber, he, figuratively speaking, was late for the Great Patriotic War. 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 the generals, as is known from Winston Churchill's winged words, are always preparing for the last war.

"Ivanov" becomes "Stalin's task"

It took exactly eight months to complete and lift into the air 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 an internal factory index SZ-1 - that is, "Stalin's task, the first copy" . As the tester noted at the end of this flight, the car turned out to be simple and easy to pilot, 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 design bureau of Nikolai Polikarpov or the KhAI team under the leadership of Joseph Neman - would go into series. 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 clause concerning the Ivanov competition: the three teams left in it were instructed to design and build Ivanov aircraft with the M-25 engine in four versions - a reconnaissance aircraft, an attack aircraft, a short-range bomber and an 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 the brigade of Pavel Sukhoi met this deadline, even ahead of schedule. Nikolai Polikarpov, whose design bureau was simultaneously working on several important projects, "Ivanov" was in the corral and by September, he did not have time for testing. And the team of Joseph Neman at the same time brought to mass production their R-10 machine - a reconnaissance aircraft, outwardly very, very similar to Sukhoi's aircraft, and received a formal five-month delay on the delivery of their Ivanov version. Formal, since it was clear that it was the R-10 that would become KhAI's contribution to the "Ivanovo" competition - and the place of the near bomber would be given to the Sukhoi aircraft.

And then began what usually happens in tests new technology: periodic breakdowns and equipment failures, unsuccessful and emergency landings, fast depletion of the resource of components and assemblies due to the fact that they have to be “driven” at maximum modes ... Three prototypes of the new aircraft participated in the tests: SZ-1, followed by 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 make it possible to identify weaknesses in the design before it is launched into series, a purely human factor intervened in the fate of the future Su-2. The car was built at factory No. 156, at which Pavel Sukhoi's design team formally existed. But the situation was such that the workers of the group had to write a letter to the very top in order to continue the suddenly stalled work on fine-tuning the “Stalin assignments”. Here is a characteristic quote from this letter, which Vadim Proklov cites in his article “The Su-2 short-range bomber and its modifications”: “All these facts are extremely painful for our team. We are confident that our one and a half year work was needed by the country and our car is a good contribution to the defense of our Motherland. We have no doubt that this machine is really adapted for mass production and even surpasses the Vulti machine in its flight tactical data and production simplicity (meaning the Vultee V-11 attack aircraft, which aircraft designer Sergei Kocherigin brought to serial production under the index BSh-1. - Author's note), which makes it possible to extremely quickly introduce the machine into a series. Therefore, we cannot reconcile ourselves 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 built several heavy and medium-sized machines at the same time, at the present time suddenly turned out to be capable of doing work on only one machine of medium tonnage, to the detriment of all the others. The Sukhoi Design Bureau is actually deprived of the production base at the plant and is even limited in the construction of mock-ups of machines scheduled for design "...

Su-2: " ugly duck» pre-war aircraft industry

The letter, oddly enough, achieved its goal: work on the "Stalin assignment" at plant No. 156 accelerated sharply, and on December 28, 1938, the last prototype of the SZ-3 was transferred for state testing at the Air Force Research Institute. Flights within the framework of these tests, like the previous copy, SZ-2, were carried out by the "troika" in Evpatoria, and they began on February 3, 1939. And a month and a half later, People's Commissar of Defense Marshal Kliment Voroshilov and People's Commissar of Aviation Industry Mikhail Kaganovich turned to 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 terms of its flight data and firepower significantly exceeds the same type of aircraft, consisting we are armed with (R-zet M-34RN and R-10 M-25V). Given the good performance of the Ivanov aircraft with<двигателем>M-87A, we ask for permission to accept it into service with the Red Army and organize mass production of these aircraft 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. Serial aircraft will be produced with a wooden fuselage, with a subsequent transition in the 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 developed with the future Su-2, when a modern aircraft was forced to “get old” for economic reasons, since there was not enough chain-aluminum 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's remember: according to the results of the first stage of the Ivanov competition, the developers of three variants of the new aircraft were appointed: all-metal (Pavel Sukhoi), mixed design (Nikolai Polikarpov) and wooden (Joseph 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 responsible for it. But when another one became the winner, it was he who had to remake his aircraft to 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, was the choice production capacity for the production of an aircraft that has already received the serial index BB-1, that is, the first short-range bomber. The group of Pavel Sukhoi, who took shape in an independent design bureau, unlike most other aircraft design bureaus Soviet Union, at first did not have its own industrial base. And her planes were instructed to build two factories: Kharkov No. 135 (where Pavel Sukhoi took the position of chief designer to speed up the construction process) and Sarcombine. But despite the formidable instructions from Moscow, neither there nor there took the new car seriously, which eventually 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 (now Korolev) near Moscow, which was assigned No. 289 and where 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 issued at the beginning of 1940 by the new people's commissar of the aviation industry, Alexei Shakhurin, on the urgent deployment of the serial production of short-range bombers BB-1 at three plants at once - in Kharkov, Taganrog and Dolgoprudny - did not lead to any radical change in the situation. The factories chosen by the responsible ones objectively could not cope with the task of producing aircraft, whose design features were an order of magnitude higher technological possibilities 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 in-line production, deciding to use the plasma-template method to ensure the interchangeability of structural elements - but the leadership of the aviation industry did not find the opportunity to place the production of BB-1 at one of the country's leading aircraft factories. And all the rest simply could not fully cope with the task assigned to them.

The army tries "drying"

All this eventually led to the fact that only in May 1940 - just a year before the start of the Great Patriotic War! - the military from a specially created bomber regiment No. 135 (according to the number of the plant that produced the vehicles) accepted and began testing the first 16 serial BB-1s. The results of military tests turned out to be very successful: despite the identified shortcomings and weaknesses of individual aircraft components (which is natural for any new technology), 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 are not difficult.

“Pilots with lower than average qualifications, who came to the part from the Air Force flight schools, master the aircraft easily and after 20-25 export flights they were independently released on the BB-1,” the military test report said. Another innovation of Pavel Sukhoi also influenced the ease of mastering the new aircraft: from the very beginning he designed a duplicated control system for the BB-1, assuming that in a combat situation it might be necessary for the navigator to replace a wounded or dead pilot. This foresight, already during the war, made it possible to save and bring to its airfield more than a dozen badly 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 made it possible for pilots to train directly on the equipment on which they were to 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 on fine-tuning certain components and assemblies of the machine. This also took a significant amount of time, and as a result, the widespread introduction of the Su-2 - this is how the BB-1 began to be officially called from December 1940 - in combat units began only in January 1941. And all the same, even when the war was already in full swing, the Sukhoi Design Bureau, together with 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 in the range of 430-480 km / h), not too well armed (only three machine guns of 7.62 mm caliber), with a small bomb load (400 kg) Su-2 could no longer perform the tasks that were originally set for him. The duties of an attack aircraft were successfully performed by the Il-2, a bomber - by 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 mass production and extreme ease of control, surpassing even the Su-2.

And yet, this close bomber managed to say its weighty word in the history of the Great Patriotic War. As, however, and many other types of weapons of the Red Army, with which she met the war and which rapidly became obsolete during its first months. The TB-3 bombers and I-16, BT-7 and T-28 fighters, which seemed formidable in parades, were all from the “last war”. But the people who controlled them were from this one - and did everything to give the enemy such a rebuff, which he did not expect, 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, the military representatives received a total of 413 bombers, of which there were 64 "dryers" in the Western Special Military District, 91 in the Kiev Special, 22 in Odessa, and 124 bombers in Kharkov. Another 85 machines were already accepted, but defended at factory airfields, and seven were listed in training center. The remaining aircraft were either on their way to their destination or were written off as a result of flight accidents.

According to reports, the plan for the release of the Su-2 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 letnabs (as navigators of such aircraft were often called at that time) for new bombers was also going at an accelerated pace. But their training was designed for a period until September, or even longer. Therefore, there is nothing surprising in the fact that, according to Nikolai Gordyukov and Dmitry Khazanov, by the beginning of the war, out of 82 short-range bomber 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 vehicles from factories, but planned to soon begin the process of retraining. At the same time, all 195 bombers that were near the border (of which only 132 were operational) were located south of the 55th parallel, that is, they covered mainly the borders of Belarus and Ukraine - up to the Black Sea. There they met the war.

Plane for heroes

From the first days, the Su-2, in addition to their purely bombing duties, also performed the tasks of attacking the advancing enemy, and escorting long-range bombers, and were scouts - in short, anyone. And of course, they suffered and suffered losses: the German pilots, many of whom by that time already had more than one military campaign behind them, had little to oppose the hastily retrained crews of the “dryers”. However, this little was enough to not only carry out the tasks of bombarding the enemy, but also inflict damage on the Luftwaffe. In particular, in the report of the headquarters of the 97th air regiment, which already at the end of June 1941 had to be withdrawn to the rear for reorganization due to loss of combat capability, it was said that 14 German fighters were shot down.

The fact that the Su-2 were able to conduct full-fledged air battles and successfully resist the Messerschmitts is stated in the documents of other air regiments armed with this machine at the beginning of World War II. To do this, sometimes their crews used such a rare type of air combat as a 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 made her ramming - the deputy squadron commander of the 135th bomber aviation regiment of the Southwestern Front, Senior Lieutenant Yekaterina 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: Captain Alexander Avdeev, who served in the 43rd Bomber Aviation Regiment, sent a burning aircraft to enemy vehicles with infantry approaching the Bolshie Sitzy airfield, and the commander of squadron 209 th bomber regiment captain Hasan Mamin - in the midst of enemy aircraft at the airfield Borovskaya.

At the same time, the appearance of new short-range bombers in the armament of the Red Army 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: rearmament with “dryers” was carried out in an atmosphere of heightened secrecy. And sometimes it played a very tragic role in the fate of their crews.

For example, the future air marshal, Hero of the Soviet Union, many years after the war, recalled: “It was like this: 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 with accurate shots and attacks my plane. I shake 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.
Retold again.
“It was me,” he said, confused and upset.
"Are you kidding, Sasha?"
“What are you kidding about! At the beginning of the war, I really shot down a Su-2. There was such a terrible incident with me, I didn’t know Sukhoi’s planes, because they appeared in units just before the war, and they looked quite unusual - I thought that a fascist ... ”

This tragic episode almost cost the future ace Alexander Pokryshkin his career, if not his life, but in the turmoil of a mass retreat, it did. It is possible that such episodes were not isolated, but we have not learned about the rest and will not 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 he was preparing, but which he “undereducated”. It is precisely the inability of the “dryers” 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 unambiguously came to the conclusion that the BB-1 was the worst prepared for combat operations. And at the same time, he was extremely tenacious: in some regiments that managed to reorganize the tactics of using the Su-2 in time, one loss of these aircraft accounted for 80 sorties - four or even five times less than, say, Pe- 2! On average, according to statistics, the losses of "dryers" were one and a half times less than the usual irretrievable combat losses for Soviet bomber aircraft.

And yet there were too few of them, tenacious, nimble, capable of playing many Su-2 aviation roles. By the autumn of 1942, only two regiments armed with these machines remained along the entire length of the Soviet-German front. The surviving specimens from other units gradually flowed into them, which were taken out for reorganization and received new aircraft: some - Il-2, some - Pe-2 or other bombers. And the “dryers” continued to be assembled at the places of forced landings, repaired at the expense of spare parts removed from downed and beyond repair cars - and returned to service.

The last of them, already as scouts 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 the production of the Su-2 was finally terminated 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 at the enemy - and enjoy the sincere, ardent love of their crews.

Hot in the truest 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 wartime winter, when the “dryers” 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 climbed. It is hard to even imagine how the pilots of other, unheated aircraft envied them. But neither the laudatory reviews of combat pilots, nor the high indicators of survivability could affect the desire of the belligerent country to reduce the range of aircraft in service and, accordingly, the efforts and costs of training pilots for them and providing machines with repair kits and spare parts.

Nevertheless, the Su-2 fell out happy fate a soldier who fulfilled his duty, as they say, to the last drop of blood. Throughout the vast space where the battles of the Great Patriotic War once thundered, 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 lay down in the ground next to their pilots and their brother-soldiers in the Black Sea region, the Don steppes or Belarusian swamps ...

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 minor flaws, but you can close your eyes to them if you are not a fan of historical copy. A noticeable drawback is the wrong shape of the hood

general information

Russian tank T-14 "Armata"

Manufacturing firm: 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 color box from Zvezda in the usual colors with an illustration of a Su-2 in flight against a background of smoke. The author of the illustration is Zhirnov.

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

Inside is dense cardboard box. We open. The box is almost full.

We put the contents on a model mat for scale. Includes: sprues (each in a separate bag), transparent sprue, decals and instructions.

Model sprues

Sprues include: A, B, C and sprue D with transparent details.

Sprue A

Sprue A contains large aircraft body parts.

Let's take a closer look. Casting quality is excellent. No flash. The stitching is even. And a LOT of rivets on the body.

Sprue A

Sprue B has only aircraft wings.

I can not judge the correct location of the rivets on the model. But for sure they will look great after washing on the finished model.

Sprue C

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

Sprue D

Transparent details on sprue D and they look great. The glasses are transparent, which is even scary to take them in hand.

Decals

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

Instruction

The instructions are black and white as usual in the form of an A3 brochure. To glue 153 parts of the Su-2 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 instructions for Su-2 from Zvezda online:

Additions to the model

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

1. Decals Behemoth



2. Color photo-etched cab Eduard





3. Photo-etched Exterior Eduard



4. Photo-etched Flaps Eduard





5. Photoetch Metallic details

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

Su-2 M-87

In addition, in order to save on 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 offset by a significant increase in the power-to-weight ratio.

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

Su-2 M-88

In March 1941, the MV-5 turret, which had an almost circular fire, was replaced by a lighter and simplified TSS-1 turret with much narrower firing sectors. From above, it was closed with a transparent visor, which had to be moved forward before opening fire. The new machine gun mount provided a gain in aerodynamics and some 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 transferred to the center section, and the shape of the engine intake pipe was made smoother. Aircraft with such innovations were sometimes referred to as Su-2M (modified).

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

Firstly, the lack of IL-2 often forced the use of the Su-2 as an attack aircraft. Four machine guns when firing at ground targets are better than two, and therefore, already in July 1941, the aircraft began to be produced with four ShKASs in the wings. They also returned the MV-5 turret to its place and again began to mount hatch installations, 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 internal installation of armor plates 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 flew around in Kharkov in September 1941, but the deployment of mass production was prevented by the urgent evacuation of aircraft factory No. 135 due to the approach of Nazi troops to the city. In October, the plant was evacuated to Perm, and soon trains arrived with the property of plant No. 207 taken out of Dolgoprudny. Both enterprises were merged into a single complex, leaving number 135 behind, but great difficulties arose with the resumption of production. During the evacuation under the bombing, a significant part of the equipment was lost, and not all of the workers were also taken out.
As a result, it was not possible to reach a normal mode of operation at the new location - in a few months, with great difficulty, only 58 bombers were assembled. There was nothing to help the plant, since everyone did not have enough people and machines. In January 1942, the Defense Committee, having studied the situation, made an unprecedented decision: stop the production of the Su-2, disband aircraft plant No. 135, and distribute equipment and personnel among other enterprises.

Experienced 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 shortage of duralumin, 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 chassis retract scheme. The only copy of the BB-2 crashed during testing and was no longer restored.