Dear Friends,
Recently Mr. Linevich has started a thread in his Facebook account and has found that the I-16 Type 28 cockpit is furnished like the prototype, even if some instruments are lacking from the St. Petersburg Central Naval Museum airplane.
I have been particularly interested by the control stick, that can be seen, even if not perfectly, in one photo, and that corresponds with the drawing in page 90 of the book "Technical description of the airplane I-16 with M-63 engine".
Both the photo and the drawing show a lever on the right side, and thanks to Mr. Averin, we know that the lever function was to discharge all the weapons simultaneously.
Preparing a composite illustration of the known I-16 control sticks, I was puzzled by the "Type 18" one.
As long as I know, it was first published and identified as a Type 18 control stick in Squadron Signal 1162 "Polikarpov fighters in action pt.2".
While I do respect and cherish the work of serious authors that have given me books that I much enjoyed, I feel that it is an enthusiast duty to investigate further and, if you are lucky enough, discover new things.
As the photos are attributed to a source, it was clear that it came from the Finnish Airforce Museum, that has a bilingual site at
https://ilmavoimamuseo.fi/ As this Museum has both a digital archive with a lot of photos and manuals, and the opportunity to buy high resolution copies of the photos they own, through the courtesy of Mr. Antti Lappalainen I was able to acquire an high resolution copy of the cockpit photo.
From it was clear that the airplane had Finnish captions for the instruments, and that near the three buttons on top of the control stick was written RAKETITT that as can be easily imagined, means "rockets" in Finnish.
As it had translated labels for the instruments, it was an airplane that was flown by the Finns.
As it had rockets, it could only be red 15, IR-101 in Finnish service, as the other VH-201/21 had a predisposition for an external fuel tank, and not for rockets, while red 15 had three couples of rockets under the wings.
So we have identified a way to fire rockets in modified Type 5, even if we cannot be sure that it was the only model used.
After a suggestion of Massimo, I see a button on the upper right part of the control stick of the Type 29 that is equipped with an ESBP-3p.
We have beautiful illustrations of the Il-2 cockpit, with captions for every detail, we can find two ESBP-3p, and two buttons on the control stick, one for rockets one for bombs.
We can suppose that some I-16 had three buttons, while others had an ESBP-3p and one button.
I hope that our Russian friends can publish a high resolution photo of the Type 29 cockpit, showing the button in clearer detail.
I have prepared a composite of the main types of control stick seen in the I-16.
From left to right we have:
- Type 5, probably the two horizontal buttons were for firing the left and the right wing machine gun.
- Type 5 modified with rockets.
- Type 10, probably the two vertical buttons were for firing the fuselage machine guns and the wing machine guns. Similar buttons were present in other models, both armed with machine guns only, and with machine guns and cannons. In the Il-2 we know that a similar arrangement was for firing the cannons (upper) and the machine guns (lower).
- Type 24, from a prototype airplane, similar to type 10.
- Type 29, similar to the Type 24, probably with a button for rockets
- From the manual, identical to the Type 28 in the Navy Museum, with one upper and two lower buttons, and the side handle to fire all the weapons.
- The UTI control stick from the airplane preserved in Finland.
I am sure that new information will surface, but now we have the proof of one rocket firing device used by I-16.
Regards
Daniele
