Early years Born on in the village of
Dilyalevo, the youngest of 11 children born to a
Russian peasant family, the largely self-taught Ilyushin left home at an early age. He worked as a factory laborer, ditch-digger at construction sites, and cleaner of gutters at a dye plant in
Saint Petersburg. In 1910, he learned that jobs were available at Kolomyazhsky Racetrack as a groundskeeper. The racetrack was also the site of the first All-Russia Festival of Ballooning in autumn of 1910, and Ilyushin assisted in unpacking crates and setting up equipment. He was also able to meet many of Russia's pioneer aviators, an event that awoke his interest in aviation. In 1911 he returned to his native village to work as a
carter of a dairy plant. The following year, he worked as a construction worker for the
Amur Railway, and in 1913 he was in
Tallinn as a worker in a shipyard. With the outbreak of
World War I in 1914, Ilyushin was conscripted into the
Imperial Russian Army, serving with the
infantry, and later (as he was literate) as a clerk in the military administration of
Vologda. When a request came for seven volunteers to serve in the fledgling Aviation Section, he was quick to volunteer. He worked at first as a mechanic and member of the ground crew. In the summer of 1917, he was qualified as a pilot. His single-engined
Ilyushin Il-2 ground-attack aircraft, the
single most-produced combat aircraft design in history (with 36,183 examples), and the
Ilyushin Il-4 twin-engined bomber (of which just over 5,200 examples were built) were used extensively in
World War II, on all fronts where the Soviets fought. After the war, Ilyushin concentrated primarily on commercial airliners, such as the
Ilyushin Il-18 and
Ilyushin Il-62, which saw extensive use with
Aeroflot and with numerous Soviet client states. In 1967 he was given the honorary rank of General-Colonel of Engineering/Technical Service. He became an
Academician of the
Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union in 1968. He remained the chief designer at the Ilyushin OKB until his retirement due to illness in 1970. From 1937 to 1970 Ilyushin also served as a deputy of the
Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. He died in 1977 in Moscow and was buried in the
Novodevichy Cemetery. ==Awards and honors==