Watched Battle for Sevastopol last night. https://www.amazon.com/Battle-Sevastopol-Yulia-Peresild/dp/B01M5HAAFN There is a scene where many BF109 attack a Soviet convoy and a UGLY SHORT TOY LOOKING Soviet fighter shoots down the BF109 with ease.

I didn't recognize the Soviet fighter so. I started searching for info on it and after many tries, found the same scene on YouTube when I use the words 'Battle For Sevastopol airplane scene'

In the YouTube comments several ID the Soviet fighter as I-16. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polikarpov_I-16

Website talking about it here: https://film.ua/en/news/1425

See the completed scene here, which won some award for special effects. Is it really possible for that UGLY SHORT TOY LOOKING Soviet fighter to shoot down BF109 so easy?



Before and After special effects making scene

https://vimeo.com/177041381#at=34

https://vimeo.com/177041568

I-16 was very agile, reasonably fast and in (less agile, heavier) later variants heavily armed.

So if a confused close in dogfight occurred the I-16 had a chance.
However German fighters tended to operate in Schwarm formations, each covering their fellows, and to use hit and run tactics, with occasional hard turning... and they shot down a lot more Soviet aircraft than they lost.

I-16 was primitive - it had hand cranked retractable undercarriage (but this made it relatively simple and reliable in harsh conditions with minimal maintenance and supplies (compared to electrics or hydraulics). It had advanced aerodynamics, for a 1930s design, but was on the brink of obsolescence in 1941. It was slightly less advanced (but more suited to modern circumstances) than the I-153.

Follow on designs to the I-16 didn't reach production, due to availability of engines earmarked for Il-2 or for the La5FN and others, and lack of solutions to the early issues with cooling (which also plagued the other types), but political and practical considerations meant only a few designs were prioritised and Polikarpov wasn't one of them.

Build quality was higher than the wartime LaGG3, to which it was superior. Overall it was however inferior in the necessary features to the more advanced Yak1, La5, MiG3 which eventually replaced the Polikarpov fighters in these and further developed forms.

(The Pre-production LaGG was a higher quality and lighter/better performing aircraft than the early production models).

Thanks. I didn't know this Soviet aircraft until seeing it in the movie. I never knew BF109 could carry bombs. That was a well made scene btw.

The I-16 also took part in a mothership/parasite project with the MASSIVE soviet bombers of the time, and quite succesful at that.

Images of the aircraft 'landing' at the bomber are in a "Wings of the Red Star" episode on Youtube, but can't find the correct episode at the moment (it's the one about Soviet pre-war bombers). Absolutely surreal to see.

The US tried the same thing with blimps/dirigibles.

The 109 (of movie) is out of this element - height.
I-16 was armed with 2 × machine guns ShKAS 7,62mm and 2 × cannons ShVAK de 20mm, better than 6x .303 of Hurricanes, that shoot down a lot of Bf 109 in B of B.

I-16 has always been my favourite soviet fighter, along with the I-153... great little Polikarpovs...

I-16 is also available on DCS

Only (some) late marques.

Initial fit was a pair of 7.62mm ShKAS guns in the cowl in tip 4 and tip 5 batches (inadequate even during the SCW)
The third batch (tip6) had a third gun fitted to the lower fuselage. (interim modification for the SCW)..
The fourth batch (tip 10) had four, two cowl and two in the wings. (final modification for the SCW, for MG armed fighters)
The tip 12 (derived from the tip 5) had a pair of cowl mounted 7.62mm and a pair of synchronised wing mounted 20mm ShVAK cannons. (lower performance, but heavier armament).
The tip 17 (derived from the tip 10) fitted two unsynchonised 20mm ShVAK in place of the wing mounted ShKAS.
The standard model for 1940 was the tip 24, which had a more powerful engine, but still only 4 ShKAS.
Relatively few tip 27/ tip 28 (tip 18 and tip 24 equivalents with the ShVAK replacing the wing guns) were available.
The final version was the tip 29, with a pair of cowl mounted ShKAS and a single lower fuselage mounted BS 12.7mm HMG.

*Mostly* the armament was 4 (higher rate of fire) 7.62mm machine guns.

What's the range of those 7.62mm machine guns?



Flying too low?

Kermit Weeks took delivery of one recently...

Start up and take off, love the start up sound.

3-4 seconds roll before the tail lift from the ground. wow

Thank you for finding those YT videos, Chucky and JimK

+1


Wheels

I am still watching the videos on the Mark Felton YT channel. Think I will be old and gray by the time I get through them all. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfCKvREB11-fxyotS1ONgww/videos

I take it they were speaking Russian; but “touch and go” was “touch and go”.




Must be a very robust engine since there were many times the prop blades came to a near halt and reversed direction. And on takeoff when he applied powere you can see the prop reverse at high rpm. That must put a lot of stress on the engine.

Da! Engine is made of Stalin Steel!

Runs on Vodka?

A cunning design, using only the number of blades necessary to absorb the power, going from a 2 blade at low RPM to a 6 blade at higher RPM

The engine reversal must be to even out the torque on the frame