Last year, we reported on the restoration of the National Air and Space Museum (NASM)’s Ilyushin Il-2 Shturmovik inside the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center’s Mary Baker Engen Restoration Hangar. Now, the aircraft’s restoration has been finalized, and it will be displayed alongside other WWII aircraft in the new Jay I. Kislak World War II in the Air Gallery, which will open in 2026.
As mentioned in our earlier article, the exact history of the Smithsonian’s Shturmovik is unclear. Still, it was constructed around late 1943, likely at the State Aircraft Factory No.18 (Zavod 18) in Russia. Shot down on the Leningrad Front in 1944, the aircraft rested at the bottom of a lake until around 1992, when it was recovered from its watery grave and sent to the former Leningrad (renamed to its original name of St. Petersburg) to begin its initial phase of restoration. Some of the older aircraft mechanics who worked on the restoration had worked on Shturmoviks during WWII (which the Soviet Union would call the Great Patriotic War). The team used sections from as many as three or four wrecked Shturmoviks to create a complete example.
It was at this point that a Canadian aircraft broker named Jeet Mahal, who had become involved in the recovery of numerous Soviet and German aircraft wrecks and their export to collectors in western Europe and the United States, would help the Smithsonian acquire this Shturmovik, which had been nearly completely restored, save for the fact that aircraft was still coated in paint primer before the application of the final paint scheme. On April 3, 1995, the aircraft was formally donated to the National Air and Space Museum by the U.S. Army Center for Military History, which worked with Mahal to bring the Il-2 to America. However, the aircraft required further restoration to be in presentable condition for static display, and so it was placed in storage at the Paul E. Garber Preservation, Restoration, and Storage Facility in Suitland, MD, where it remained tucked away for the next 26 years.
The ongoing renovations of the NASM’s National Mall location in downtown Washington, D.C., provided an opportunity to pull several aircraft from storage and prepare them for display in the newly renovated galleries. Being the sole Soviet WWII aircraft in the Smithsonian’s collection and given the Ilyushin Il-2 Shturmovik’s outsized impact on the outcome of the Eastern Front, with more than 36,000 examples being produced, the time was right to restore the aircraft for the new World War II in the Air gallery.
Restoring the aircraft has come with challenges, from translating reference material from Russian to English to refabricating a new wooden tail section, with restoration specialist Jay Flanagan using 1,700 pieces of wood to construct the tail in exact detail. The Smithsonian was further aided by the Pima Air and Space Museum of Tucson, Arizona, which has its own Il-2 Shturmovik, restored after recovering from a Russian lake.
