Well, IL-2s had wooden wings and tails, but have you seen pictures of shturmoviks that returned to base with only half of tail structures? And no more then 2/3 of one of the wings?...
The sadest thing was that a tail gunner was added only on 1942 version. Gunner's positoin was removed from the original TzKB-55 prototype. And when it was returned back - gunner was almost unprotected with armour. So, losses were about 10 gunners per one pilot...
BTW, shturmovik pilots had the lowest requrements for the awards: everyone who made 100 combat sorties was awarded with a Golden Star of Hero...
That guys had absolutely no nerves: they usualy flew so low that there was no chance to bail out safely. Georgiy Beregovoy (Cosmonaut-12, Soyuz-3 in 1968, got his first Golden star in 1944), told that some of his friends survived from burning ILs only because he managed to jump into a haystack...
Another story was told by an infantry officer. His crew was accidentaly "stormed" by IL-2s when they were taking control of the bridge left by Germans. He said it was the worst horror in his whole career...
And the best IL-2 ace killed 12 German planes...
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With respect,
Pavel Pavlov,
Commissar 25th IAP WB VVS