Comment on The lost Battle! by Kel Harper

Not to nitpick, but in English it’s “cylinder”, not “cilinder”, although I believe that spelling is correct in some languages.
More importantly I disagree that the Il-2 has any relation to the Fairey Battle. They share nothing other than the same general layout, and it’s a very obvious, common-sense layout. You could say the Japanese Ki-51 Sonia is a “copy” of the Battle, other than having a radial engine and fixed gear. Heck, you could say the same, but even more accurately, about the B5N Kate, or even the B6N Jill. The B5N is a lightly-loaded monoplane with a three-man crew, 1,000-2,000lb bombload, 1,000hp-class engine. The bombardier sits in the middle and aims the bombs through a window in the floor (when not being used as a torpedo bomber). The B6N is the same, only bigger and more powerful. The Ki-51 is a light bomber and observation plane, with a 2-man crew and also can aim bombs through a window in the floor of the rear. The Ki-30 Cherry comes to mind. All of these are far more like the Battle than the Il-2…even the SBD and the TBD Devastator, really. Far from being unusual, the general layout is the FIRST thing that comes to mind when asked to design a light bomber. It’s only by thinking outside the box that you come up with twin engines, twin tails, machines like the Fw 189, etc. The Il-2 is really a very different machine, other than both of them being low-wing monoplanes with long-ish canopies, single liquid-cooled engines, and the ability to drop bombs. Oh, and both of them can carry bombs in underwing “bays” and have rear gunners. That’s a pretty tiny similarity. The Il-2 was originally designed as a single-seat armored ground attack plane. It was built around heavy cannon armament, a single pilot, and heavy armor from ground fire. That’s really nothing like the formula of the Battle.
Although that brings me to my next point: you have fallen for the same old lies that I’ve seen repeated in numerous sources, that the Battle “utterly lacked armor”. I don’t know where this mnotion originally came from, but it’s been repeated in so many sources that it’s become established “fact” by now. Reality: the Battle was considered heavily armored for the era. Here is an article translated from German discussing armor of various British aircraft, which “only includes the obsolescent Battle due to its unusually heavy armor”, including a diagram of location of all the armor plates, which well-protect the entire rear sector and a good deal of the lower sector from light-caliber fire. It’s not of the same caliber or intent as the heavy armor of the Il-2, but it’s quite heavy for the era (another myth: that the Battle “lacked the armor and self-sealing fuel tanks that were common among its contemporaries”. False. Self-sealing tanks were in their very infancy, and only the very newest British types were fitted with crude self-sealing tanks at the outbreak of the war, and armor was unusual and thin. It wasn’t until after combat experience that they began to hastily add armor to the cockpits and fuel tanks, pending successful production of self-sealing tanks. So you see, the Battle was EXACTLY LIKE its contemporaries, not lacking something that other planes had all adopted by then. The Wellington, Hampden, Whitley, none of them entered the war with self-sealing tanks. No US combat craft had them. Not sure about the Hurricane, but they were a new gadget on Spitfires. I don’t think things were any different with the Germans.
But on the whole I totally agree with you: there was nothing wrong with the Battle, per se. If the British hadn’t been obsessed with the mistaken notion of bombers fighting their way through to the target all alone, the Battle could have been a far more successful machine. If protected by a suitable escort to keep the fighters off of the bombers (and used on lighter battlefield targets instead of heavily defended targets that were more properly the work of more powerful bombers), it could have enjoyed a very different reputation, and be remembered as a useful light bomber and auxiliary aircraft. The Ki-52 and Il-2 were both highly successful in their niches…but you didn’t see the Japanese sending the Ki-51 against heavily-defended dockyards. And you didn’t see them sending the B5N to attack the US fleet without fighter escort…when they did, they were massacred.