Petlyakov Pe-2
The Petlyakov Pe-2 was a Soviet twin-engined dive bomber of the Second World War, designed by Vladimir Petlyakov's bureau while he was held in an NKVD sharashka. Developed from the VI-100 high-altitude fighter in a 45-day redesign in 1940, it entered service in 1941 and became the most numerous Soviet bomber of the war, at its peak making up 75 percent of the Soviet twin-engined bomber force. Published production totals run from about 10,500 to 11,400 aircraft; the type also served in reconnaissance, and its Pe-3 derivative flew as a heavy and night fighter.
Why It Mattered
The Pe-2 gave the Soviet Union a fast twin-engined dive bomber in numbers no other Soviet bomber matched: at its peak the type made up 75 percent of the Soviet twin-engined bomber force. Walter J. Boyne, writing in Air Force Magazine, called it one of the Second World War's best attack aircraft: fast, rugged, manoeuvrable and deadly. Its value was not only numerical: the same airframe also worked in reconnaissance, and its fighter derivative, the Pe-3, flew as a heavy and night fighter. Crews nicknamed the aircraft "Peshka", the pawn.
Design Notes
The Pe-2 began as the VI-100, a high-altitude fighter designed by Vladimir Petlyakov's team inside an NKVD special technical prison, a sharashka. When the dive-bombing requirement replaced the fighter requirement in 1940, the team had 45 days to turn the two-seat fighter into a three-seat dive bomber. The conversion dropped the cabin pressurisation and turbochargers, added perforated dive brakes to the wings, and fitted bomb bays in the fuselage and in the rear of each engine nacelle. The airframe was of all-metal stressed-skin construction, powered by two Klimov M-105 V-12 engines, with a typical bombload of 600 kilograms and a maximum of 1,000 kilograms. Combat experience exposed the light defensive armament, and later production replaced the 7.62 mm dorsal and ventral guns with 12.7 mm Berezin guns, the hand-held dorsal position giving way to a turret.
Operational History
The first PB-100, by then redesignated Pe-2, flew on 15 December 1940, and deliveries to field units began in the spring of 1941. Several hundred aircraft had been built when Germany invaded in June 1941, and the type's speed soon made it a hard target for German fighters. Pe-2s made their first significant strikes as the Red Army rallied in December 1941, then fought through Stalingrad and Kursk to the final drive on Berlin in 1945. Crews developed the "carousel" tactic, circling a target and diving on it in succession, and the best crews became known as bombing "snipers". Petlyakov himself was killed on 12 January 1942 in the crash of one of his own aircraft, and his bureau continued the type's development under Alexander Putilov. Front-line feedback produced the improved Pe-2FT, while a reconnaissance version without dive brakes had entered production in August 1941. Finland flew seven captured aircraft, serials PE-211 to PE-217, against their former owners, first on bombing work and then on long-range photographic reconnaissance.
Afterlife
Production ran from December 1940 to December 1945, and the published totals disagree: Air Force Magazine gives 11,400 built, the accounting cited by Wikipedia gives 11,070, and Air Vectors puts the cited range at about 10,500 to 11,500. The type left Soviet service in 1951 and Polish service in 1957; Yugoslavia flew 123 Pe-2FTs and nine trainers until 1954, and Czechoslovakia operated 32 Pe-2FTs and three trainers into 1951. After the war several Soviet bloc air forces also flew the type, which NATO knew by the reporting name Buck. Survivors are few and mostly partial: a Pe-2FT is displayed at the Museum of the Polish Army in Warsaw, a composite aircraft is held at Monino, further aircraft are displayed at Verkhnyaya Pyshma, and cockpit sections are held at Bodø and Kbely.