Sergey Ilyushin Sergey Vladimirovich Ilyushin ( ; – February 9 , 1977 ) was a Soviet aircraft designer who founded the Ilyushin aircraft design bureau . Biography . Early years . Born in the village of Dilyalevo , Vologda Governorate Russian Empire as the youngest of 11 children in a peasant family , the largely self - taught Ilyushin left home at an early age . He worked as a factory laborer , ditch - digger at construction sites , and cleaner of gutters at a dye plant in Petrograd . In 1910 , he learned that jobs were available at Kolomyazhsky Racetrack as a groundskeeper . The racetrack was also the site of the first All - Russia Festival of Ballooning in autumn of 1910 , and Ilyushin assisted in unpacking crates and setting up equipment . He was also able to meet many of Russia ' s pioneer aviators , and even awoke his interest in aviation . However , in 1911 he returned to his native village to work as a carter of a dairy plant . The following year , he worked as a construction worker for the Amur Railway , and in 1913 he was in Tallinn as a worker in a shipyard . With the outbreak of World War I , Ilyushin was conscripted into the Imperial Russian Army , serving with the infantry , and later ( as he was literate ) as a clerk in the military administration of Vologda . When a request came for seven volunteers to serve in the fledgling Aviation Section , he was quick to volunteer . He worked at first as a mechanic and member of the ground crew . In the summer of 1917 , he was qualified as a pilot . However , in March 1918 , with the withdrawal of the Provisional Government from the war , he was demobilized and sent back to his native village . He helped supervise the increasing nationalization of factories in the area and in October 1918 joined the Bolshevik party . With the Russian Civil War , Ilyushin was drafted into the Red Army in May 1919 and was an aviation technician of VVS RKKA ( Red Army ) . That autumn , a White Movement Avro 504 biplane made a forced landing near Petrozavodsk . Ilyushin led a team which dismantled it , and sent it to Moscow where it was reverse - engineered into the Soviet U - 1 trainer , of which 737 examples were subsequently built . Work in aviation . In the fall of 1921 Ilyushin left military service and entered the Institute of Engineers of the Red Air Fleet ( renamed the Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy ) in 1922 . During his student years , he concentrated on the design of gliders , taking part in numerous competitions . In 1925 , one of his designs was sent to a competition in Germany , where it took first prize for flight time . After obtaining a degree in engineering in 1926 , Ilyushin started designing aircraft at the TsAGI , where he worked with Nikolai Nikolaevich Polikarpov and Andrei Tupolev . By 1931 , he was Assistant Chief of the Research and Test Institute at TsAGI , and began maneuvering to form his own independent design bureau . In 1933 , Ilyushin became chief of TsKB at Moscow plant named after V . R . Menzhinski which later grew into the Ilyushin OKB in 1935 . His Ilyushin Il - 2 strike aircraft and Ilyushin Il - 4 bomber were used extensively in World War II , with many thousands of aircraft produced . After the war , Ilyushin concentrated primarily on commercial airliners , such as the Ilyushin Il - 18 and Ilyushin Il - 62 , saw extensive use with Aeroflot and numerous Soviet client states . In 1967 , he was given the honorary rank of General - Colonel of Engineering / Technical Service . He also became an Academician of USSR Academy of Science in 1968 . He remained the chief designer at the Ilyushin OKB until his retirement due to illness in 1970 . From 1937 - 1970 , Ilyushin also served as a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR . He died in 1977 in Moscow and was buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery .