One of the great bombers of the war which can be termed as a “Forgotten Aircraft”, the Ilyushin IL-4 (Cyrillic Илью́шин Ил-4, NATO reporting name: "Bob") was overshadowed in Western thinking by the British and American aircraft.In spite of this, well over 5,000 IL-4s were produced between 1937 and 1944. The system was a commendably success. Its design was sound although a poor defensive armament array ultimately led to high and unacceptable losses to the extent that production was completed by 1944. Still, IL-4 and were widely used in the final stage of the war. Thus, during the Berlin operation they dropped on targets more than 3000 tons bomb for only 6 days. In August 1945, IL-4 bombed units of the Kwantung Army, the Japanese ships in the ports and bases in North Korea, in the Sea of Japan and the La Perouse Strait. Also, there were some variants of this plane, such as torpedo bomber IL-4T, capable of carrying one 940 kg torpedo, and surveillance plane IL-4 "aerophoto".
