Guideline Publications Ilyushin Il-28 - Warpaint #130

[Mike]

Ilyushin Il-28 - Warpaint #130

Guideline Publications

 

 

This book is originally by author Nikolay Yakubovich, translated by Kevin Bridge, and covers the birth and development of the Iluyshin Il-28, known as the Beagle in NATO circles, the Soviet Union’s first medium jet bomber after WWII, thanks partly to the foolishness of the British Government at the time, who naively sold the Soviets examples of the Nene jet engine, allowing them to use them in projects until they could reverse-engineer their own, which they eventually improved upon as the RD-45.  The Il-28 flew with two RD-45 engines slung under its straight wings in streamlined nacelles, topping 500mph with a crew of three and a reasonable bomb-load that it could haul a decent distance.

 

 

 

The book is in the usual Warpaint format of portrait A4(ish) with a soft card cover but has an increased page count from the norm and utilises a perfect binding instead of the usual pair of staples to accommodate the total of 64 pages plus content printed on the four sides of the glossy covers, and a loose sheet of A2 plans in 1:72 printed on both sides and penned by the author.  A long section details the birth of the type with its influences from captured Nazi designs such as the Arado Ar.234, the route to the finalised design, then the subsequent variants and history carries on throughout the book, incorporating a summary of the operational experiences of the bomber and its various incarnations. 

 

 

 

The pages include a lot of useful pictures with informative captions of aircraft on the apron, on the field, in the air, during trials, crashed and under maintenance with panels missing, plus appropriate photos and drawings dotted around, but the engineering-type drawings have Cyrillic text, so you'll have to rely on the captions unless you read Russian.  The Colours & Markings section shows the narrow range of official schemes that the type was painted, but the many profiles illustrate that camouflage was applied at times where suitable.  The "In Detail" section has some numbered close-up photos with matching captions providing excellent information that will be a boon to modellers as well as people that just like to know what everything does.

 

 

 

 

My favourite variant is the ugly one of course, which is the two-cockpit trainer version that has a slight droop-snoot, although nothing quite so ugly as the Yak-38 or Mig-25 2-seaters.  Gotta love ‘em!

 

Conclusion

The Warpaint series always gets a thumbs-up due to their inability to produce a bad one.  This is an excellent book that will see plenty of use by anyone interest in, or building this semi-ubiquitous aircraft from the early Cold War.

 

Very highly recommended.

 

 

Review sample courtesy of