In the Soviet Union, aviation developed by leaps and bounds, and aircraft designers regularly developed new aircraft or upgraded old ones. Here it is in the early 1950s. it was decided to replace the Il-28 jet aircraft with a more modern version. It just turned out that it was not so easy to do this: the Il-54 transonic bomber developed for this purpose was never accepted into service.
The history of this now little-known project began in 1952, when the Soviet command was a decision was made to create a transonic bomber, as a replacement for another OKB S.V. Ilyushin - IL-28. The fact is that at that time this model was one of the first serial jet front-line bombers of the USSR. And although they began to operate it only in 1950, they decided to replace it just a couple of years later.
Officially, the countdown to the development of the aircraft was put by the Decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. Some requirements for the new car were also spelled out there: for example, according to the editors of Novate.ru, the transonic bomber was supposed to reach a speed of 1.15, in flight conditions at an altitude of 4,750 meters. In addition, the future Il-54 was supposed to be able to overcome 2200-2500 kilometers in one flight, carrying about three tons of cargo on board. Only two years were allotted for the execution of the state order.
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While working on the project, Ilyushin Design Bureau specialists encountered a number of nuances, including problems with taking off from unpaved surfaces. Moreover, certain design features had to be changed already in the course of work: for example, if initially it was a low-wing, then a year later, Ilyushin personally changed the design so that the aircraft turned out to be a high-wing aircraft, and it was also decided to abandon the T-shaped plumage. In total, five different modifications of the Il-54 were developed.
The crew of the aircraft consisted of a navigator, a pilot and a gunner-radio operator, who were located on chairs equipped with a catapult, and this process could take place in different ways: if the ejection of the gunner-radio operator and navigator was carried out down, then the pilot left up. It was first possible to check the car in flight on April 3, 1955. A year later, the second prototype was released, which differed from its predecessor in modified components and other aircraft engines - AL-7F. But this project did not give an impetus to life: it turned out that nothing innovative and improved in they couldn’t come up with a comparison with existing models, and therefore the serial production of the IL-54 and did not go.
In addition to the topic: IL-112: the plane that was not supposed to take off
Source: https://novate.ru/blogs/190522/63032/