General info for Ar-2

• Country USSR
• Vehicle role Light Bomber / Dive Bomber
• Rank 1

• Battle rating in
  • arcade battles 2.7
  • realistic battles 2.3
  • simulator battles 2.7

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Wiki info about Ar-2

Official War Thunder wiki

Arkhangelsky Ar-2 (SB-RK) twin-engine front-line dive bomber (Tupolev OKB). An all-metal, twin-engine monoplane dive bomber with a retractable landing gear system including a tail wheel. Its crew consisted of three persons. This aircraft was designed under the direction of A. A. Arkhangelsky and was a further structural development of the high-speed SB bomber. It differed from the SB in its shorter wing and its streamlined, spindle-shaped nose section and modified nacelles, with water-cooled radiators removed from them and placed on the wing (hence the "SB-RK" designation where "SB" means "high-speed bomber" and "RK" means "radiators-wing"). The SB-RK prototype was tested in 1939. Full-scale production of the aircraft designated the Ar-2 started in 1940 at Factory No. 22, in Moscow. Production Ar-2s were equipped with 1,100 hp Klimov M-105R twelve-cylinder, V-type, geared water-cooled engines. The plane's defensive armament included an NU nose mount with a 7.62 mm ShKAS machine gun with 500 rounds. The machine gun was fitted in a special sphere that enabled it to fire forward within a 50-degree cone-shaped region. The TSS-1 upper rear machine gun mount ("TSS" standing for "high-speed aircraft turret") had a 7.62 mm ShKAS machine gun with 1,000 rounds and a K-8T collimator sight. When firing, the upper canopy (nicknamed the "turtle") was moved back on rollers along rails and partially raised upward to protect the gunner from the incoming flow. In order to protect the plane from below, the aircraft had a retractable MV-2 turret which housed a 7.62 mm ShKAS machine gun with 600 rounds and an OP-2L periscope sight. The aircraft's standard bomb capacity was 600 kg (carried internally), which was the same as that of the SB, its predecessor, while its maximum bomb capacity could reach 1,500 kg with various combinations of internal and external loads. More advanced NP-1 racks were fitted under the Ar-2's centre wing section to carry bombs weighing 250 or 500 kg. The bombs were fastened in one central holder near the plane's center of gravity, and the plane's hold on them was reinforced with the help of side stops. The Ar-2 entered service with the Red Army Air Force in the spring of 1940. The plane was in service from the beginning of the war until late 1944, with the units of the Red Army Air Force and Soviet naval aviation, as a dive bomber and a reconnaissance aircraft. The Ar-2's production was discontinued in early 1941. A total of about 200 aircraft were produced.