Wednesday 14 October 2015

Il-2 Penetration

The Il-2 Sturmovik ground attacker airplane carried a large number of weapons for dealing with armoured targets. Here is the tactical data on some of them.

"82 mm armour piercing rocket round (RBS-82) designed by NII-3 with an LF warhead designed by NII-24 and an AV-96 detonator designed by TsKB-47:
  • Dimensions: 1035 mm in length, 82 mm caliber
  • Mass: total mass 14.9 kg, explosive mass 0.450 kg
  • Rocket charge: two pellets of N3-70/10-275 mm powder with three ingiters using rifle gunpowder.
  • Detonator: tail, AV-96, with a two bearing safety, 0.04-0.06 seconds of delay, mass: 0.350 kg, length: 80 mm
  • Capable of penetrating 50 mm of armour from a range of 800-900 meters while diving at an angle of 70-85 degrees.
  • The rocket propellant grants additional 350 m/s of speed.
  • The RBS-82 can be installed on stock RO-82 launchers.
...
1000 kg aircraft armour piercing bomb (BRAB-1000) designed by GSKB-47
  • Length (without fuse): 2807 mm
  • Stabilizer wingspan: 492 mm
  • External diameter at the foundation of the curved taper: 356 mm
  • Distance of the center of mass from the head cut of the bomb: 1121 mm
  • Mass, fully armed: 1000 kg
  • Explosive: TNT
  • Explosive mass: 130.8 kg
  • Detonator: two AV-87 tail fuses
  • Penetration from 4000 meter height without damaging the hull: 7" of surface-hardened armour at K=2300
  • Time to fall from a height of 2000 meters: 20.4 seconds"
I don't know why the penetration of the BRAB-1000 is in inches, but later on in the document it's stated again in millimeters (180 mm). 

Via gistory.

5 comments:

  1. 1000kg bomb on Il-2? Never knew of one. What was it intended use? Bunker buster? Anti-ship? Where was it used?

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  2. "1000kg bomb on Il-2? Never knew of one. What was it intended use?

    vs. Iowa.

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    1. I find that hard to believe. Operating planes on the Bering Sea would be pain in the ass, and that's the only way for US ships to actually meet Soviet ones (Iowa being ordered in 1939 and commissioned in 1943 would be another problem - bomb was probably designed a little bit earlier).
      If I would have to guess, I'd say that they're intended to use in the Baltic or Black Sea fleet aviation. But, then again why 1000kg bomb? For those few Polish destroyers? Or for Turkish fleet? Kind of overkill.

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    2. These were more or less the same people who designed hideously powerful 107 mm guns and hundred-plus ton tanks to carry them around '40, though.

      More practically the bomb was presumably a general-purpose hardened target killer for the air force, pretty sure every period military that wanted its flying branch to be taken seriously had at least one. If the IL-2 could carry it that's just an incidental bonus.

      ...wasn't one of the Sturmovik's main antitank weapons the 2.5 kg PTAB shaped-charge bomblets used in straight-up saturation runs, though?

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  3. Why on earth would anybody rate performance of a free falling bomb with such an unusable criterium:

    Protective limit of FACE HARDENED armour De Marre K= 2300 against impact?

    This De Marre K is exceptionally low and out of time by ww2 for high quality naval KC armour. Plus, nobody protected decks with KC armour as everybody knew that homogenious armour is much better in this application.

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