Ilyushin Il-28

The Ilyushin Il-28 (NATO reporting name Beagle) was a twin-engine, medium-range jet bomber designed by the Ilyushin Design Bureau from late 1947 around two Klimov VK-1 turbojets, a Soviet development of the Rolls-Royce Nene. Its first prototype flew in July 1948, it was ordered into mass production in 1949 and it entered service in 1950 as the Soviet Union's first jet bomber built in large numbers, with 6,316 produced in the USSR. A crew of three flew it, and its wings, tail and fuselage were built in separate halves and bolted together. Variants included the Il-28U trainer, the Il-28R reconnaissance version and the Il-28T torpedo bomber, and China built it without licence as the Harbin H-5. Exported to some twenty countries, it was flown in the Iraqi-Kurdish war and the North Yemen civil war, and Cuba received 42 in 1962 before the missile crisis sent them back.