In the run-up to Victory Day celebrations, the Russian television channel RT has published first-ever panoramic footage made aboard a vintage WWII-era Ilyushin Il-2 Soviet ground attack aircraft.
Alexey Rogozin, general director of PAO Il, the publicly held aviation company, remarked that partaking in this endeavor was a "great honor."
Commonly referred to as one of the symbols of the Victory, the Ilyushin Il-2 Sturmovik ground attack aircraft was mass produced by the Soviet Union during the Second World War. Stalin himself once said of these aircraft that "they are as essential to the Red Army as air and bread."
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There were as many as 36,183 built, making it one of the widest-manufactured piloted aircraft in aviation history, alongside the US civilian Cessna 172, as well as the Soviet Union’s own Polikarpov Po-2 Kukuruznik multi-purpose double-wing plane.