95,625 views
In 2022, the United Aircraft Company reported a sad event: Shamil Mukhtarov, who was the chief designer of the Il-18 and Il-62, died at the age of 70. The press called one of these aircraft "the steel pearl of Soviet aviation", and NATO gave it the name "Simpleton". These are quite contradictory names for the same aircraft. Let's figure out what made it so remarkable. According to most sources, the Il-18 was created and launched into production in a very short time - from 1956 to 1957. Sounds impressive: they designed it, and just a year later the plane was already in the sky! However, this is not entirely accurate and even at that time it would have been impossible to implement it so quickly - to build and test a completely new aircraft. The idea of creating a modern long-range aircraft capable of carrying a large number of passengers occurred to Ilyushin in the spring of 1945, when the country was celebrating victory in the Great Patriotic War. At the same time, the design of the Il-18 began, which was planned to be equipped with four Charomsky ACh-72 diesel piston engines. This aircraft could take on board up to 60 passengers and cover distances of up to 5 thousand kilometers with a cruising speed of 450 km/h at an altitude of 7.5 km. It was planned that this liner would be used along with the existing Il-12 and Li-2.