Polikarpov I-16 "Ishak" | The Revolutionary Russian Fighter [Aircraft Overview #12]

the polycarp i-16 was famous as being the first low wing monoplane with an enclosed cockpit and a retractable landing gear to enter service as a military fighter admittedly it rarely featured a fully enclosed cockpit on the front line for reasons we will discuss shortly but it was designed and built that way nonetheless like many soviet technological stories from the 1930s the story of the i-16 begins in a soviet prison nikolai polikarpov along with dmitry gagorovich and several other aircraft designers was employed at state aircraft factory number 39 employed is perhaps a loose term as they also act drank and slept there all under armed guard there was a need to develop multiple new aircraft for the soviet air force also known as the vvs and in 1929 nikolai was working on something called the i5 which would go on to become the i-15 biplane he was also working on a monoplane fighter design as well and at the beginning of the 1930s the vvs was looking to employ both biplanes and monoplanes in its combat squadrons of the future there was still some hesitation about fully committing to monoplane designs but the military could clearly see that the monoplanes were quickly becoming the future and concept work began in 1932 with work beginning on the first i-16 prototype in june 1933 like many aircraft of the time it contained a blend of the old and the new but in some ways it was a dramatic departure from previous aircraft designs and in some ways it was revolutionary it had a barrel-like wooden monocoque fuselage with fabric covering this was a traditional start and it was more due to the fact that russia didn't yet have the capacity to mass-produce all-metal aircraft rather than a lack of innovation in the design itself polykarpov wanted to keep the aircraft as light as possible and the wood frame helped with that but also to improve its lightness the aircraft would only have a length of 20 feet it had a large radial engine in the nose and an equally large tail fin at the back its diminutive yet stocky appearance would eventually earn it to the nickname ishaq or donkey it also gave it an unorthodox center of gravity that would lead to some interesting stability developments the aircraft was initially designed to be equipped with two wing-mounted 7.62 millimeter cast machine guns however from the beginning some test pilots would protest that this armament was too light sadly it was a matter that would not be rectified until combat reports confirmed their opinions along with the traditional stuff the prototype had some more innovative features it had a landing gear that could be retracted up into the wings greatly aiding its aerodynamics in a world dominated still by fixed to landing gear aircraft this was considered a real innovation although there was the caveat that the pilot had to hand crank the gear to raise it up it also had a fully enclosed glass canopy one that could be slid back to allow the pilots easy egress in practice the canopy would unfortunately underperform the glazing was often of a very poor quality and was apparently a nightmare to keep clean with many pilots opting to replace it with the short windshield that is often associated with the i-16 today the prototype also featured large ailerons that ran along almost the entire trailing edge of the wing these ailerons could also be operated as flaps being able to droop at a 15 degree angle this is somewhat seen as the predecessor of what we would deem as modern day flapperons the first i-16 prototype designated tskb12 took to the skies for the first time on the 30th of december 1933 it was designed to be powered by a licensed built right cyclone radial engine however it was taking longer than expected to get approval so the decision was made to fit the m22 engine instead it itself being a license built version of a license built version of the bristol jupiter engine eventually a prototype was also built with the cyclone engine and the two were compared beginning a trend that would see various engines fitted to an ever-increasing variety of i-16s during its development cycle initial reports during the first trials were good and the aircraft was praised for its good maneuverability however it also demonstrated some rather terrifying instability when there was sudden control input after much testing it was found that although the aircraft could very easily wing stall with sudden control input it would also find that the aircraft could naturally recover from these incidents provided that power was kept applied and the pilots kept their stick in a neutral position full service trials began on the i-16 in 1934 and the first units of pre-production i-16 type ones were delivered that year stalin had been very impressed by the prototypes and even allowed them to participate in a flyover of red square these early models were powered by the m22 engine one that was preferred by pilots as the cyclone engines caused vibrations in the aircraft the manually retracted landing gear had a habit of jamming due to its mechanical complexity a problem that could only be solved in the air by great physical exertion of the pilot this was an especially dangerous problem if you ever wanted to land again and although it was eventually greatly improved in later models the prototypes would often be flown with their landing gear kept down to avoid any potential fatal mishaps the first full production version of the i-16 was the type 4 which was still powered by the m22 engine however despite pilots complaints about the cyclone engine a third prototype had been developed to use the new license built m25 which was a copy of the cyclone and this resulted in the i-16 type 5. to accommodate this new engine the type 5 had a new engine cowling cooling and control shutters and a redesigned exhaust system the aircraft also carried over the additional pilot armor that had been provided on the i-16 type 4. when it first entered service the type 5 was both the fastest and lightest production fighter in the world weighing in at a relatively featherweight 1460 kilos and packing a top speed of 454 kilometers an hour the type 5 and the even lighter and more powerful type 6 would see action for the first time during the spanish civil war in november of 1936. they performed well outclassing their biplane opponents in speed and utterly surprising the nationalist forces that were encroaching upon madrid in their first engagement a flight of i-16s claimed four enemy aircraft destroyed and they soon began to dominate the skies over spain wherever they went this excellent start wasn't without its problems it was quickly discovered that the guns of the i-16 tended to jam and they were also difficult to aim being fired via a cable on what was already a somewhat unstable airframe it was also once again represented that the armament of the aircraft was too light sometimes requiring many passes to inflict enough damage to force down an opposing aircraft the i-16 was also found to be fragile at times it was praised for its maneuverability and had a truly excellent roll rate being able to perform a full aileron roll in about one and a half seconds but it also liked to snap its wings when performing said rolls especially at higher speeds and it really didn't like high g turns these issues especially the ones regarding firepower were addressed rather quickly the wings were strengthened and the i-16 type 6 featured an additional gun mounted under the fuselage and then the even more impressive i-16 type 10 had four guns two mounted on each wing it also did away with the enclosed canopy completely becoming the first i-16 to be fitted with the smaller windshield as standard this improved the aircraft's combat effectiveness as the pilots could not only see their enemies without straining but could shoot more bullets at them too but at the same time this improvement came along it was largely offset by the appearance of the new german bf-109bs and in frightening numbers by the end of the spanish civil war 187 of the 276 i-16s deployed had been lost but valuable lessons had also been learned firepower would never again be neglected and the four gun at type 10 was now considered to be the absolute bare minimum in acceptable weaponry older type fives had their firepower augmented by the addition of two 20 millimeter shiva cannons significantly improving their lethality against unarmored targets this is something that would be demonstrated first in the far east at the battle of kalkin goal it would however also demonstrate the beginning of the i-16's obsolescence they suffered heavy losses against the more sophisticated all-metal japanese aircraft especially the nakajima ki-27 however the aircraft continued to receive upgrades and be produced in large numbers it also continued to field upgraded weaponry becoming the first aircraft to successfully use an air-to-air missile to destroy an opponent when an i-16 fired an rs-82 unguided rocket and a key 27 in august of 1939 when germany commenced operation barbarossa in the summer of 1941 many say that the i-16 constituted the backbone of the vvs and when you look at the numbers it's not surprising at all at the outbreak of the invasion over a third of the entire soviet air force consisted of i-16s fielded by 57 squadrons because of this the i-16 bases were heavily targeted during the opening air assaults in the first two days just under 700 i-16s had been destroyed many of them were on the ground when the i-16 managed to get into the sky its main opponent was the bf 109 ml series it is here that we see some of the contrasting technologies and tactics that personified aerial combat over the eastern front so much especially in the opening year of the conflict the i-16 could be more maneuverable than the 109s especially when it came to roll and flat turn performance but the 109s had the superior straight line speed climb and dive rates thanks to its more powerful engine and improved aerodynamics this led to the somewhat stereotypical tactics of the german pilots flying higher to pounce on their slow opponents and the russian pilots using baiting tactics to drag their faster opponents down into the aerial equivalent of a knife fight and a phone booth gun for gun the cannon armed i-16s could more or less match the 109s although they carried less ammunition however the cannon armed i-16s were less numerous than the types equipped with just the four machine guns and in that situation the german fighters had a clear firepower advantage the i-16 was also more fragile with a tendency to catch fire and then stay on fire when hit thanks to its wooden frame construction by late 1942 the i-16 was beginning to be replaced by more modern fighters in the frontline role but it had stood at the brunt of the aerial wing of the german invasion surprisingly a large number of them survived to see retirement perhaps a testament to the large numbers built during the war sources conflict wildly some saying around 8 600 being built some going as high as 20 000. the true number is no doubt difficult to get close to due to the secretive nature of the soviet union during the cold war and the large numbers of records being displaced or destroyed during or immediately following the end of the second world war thanks to this large production number though several i-16s survived to this day including some that were restored to an air-worthy condition in the 1990s [Music] you

Channel: Rex's Hangar

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Keywords: polikarpov i-16, war thunder, world of warplanes, I-16, aviation, history, military, vvs, soviet union, soviet russia, i-16 fighter, polikarpov, russian air force, ww2, operation barbarossa, ww2 history, ww2 fighters, MiG, ww2 documentary, spanish civil war, winter war, khalkhin gol, i-15 biplane, i-16 model, model aircraft, aviation history, military history, air force, i-16 donkey, Sino-Japanese War, Nikolai Nikolaevich Polikarpov, world war 2, russian front

Id: KD0SYy-stt4

Length: 13min 26sec (806 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 17 2021