Ikarus IK-2
| Ikarus IK 2 | |
|---|---|
| Role | Fighter |
| Manufacturer | Ikarus A.D. |
| Designer | Ljubomir Ilić and Kosta Sivčev |
| First flight | 22 April 1935 |
| Introduction | 1935 |
| Retired | 1945 |
| Primary users |
Royal Yugoslav Air Force Air Force of the Independent State of Croatia |
| Number built | 12 |
The Ikarus IK-2 was a 1930s high-wing, single-seat, monoplane fighter aircraft of Yugoslav design built for the Royal Yugoslav Air Force. The IK-2 was designed by French-trained engineers Kosta Sivčev and Ljubomir Ilić, who saw the desirability of a developing a home-grown aircraft industry. A gull-wing design, it was armed with a hub-firing and fuselage-mounted synchronised machine guns. Just 12 production models were built, as the aircraft was obsolescent at the time it was brought into service in 1935, and only eight were serviceable at the time of the German-led Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941. After the defeat of Yugoslavia, the remaining four aircraft were taken onto the strength of the air force of the Axis puppet state, the Independent State of Croatia, but none survived the war.
In the late 1920s, a scheme promoted by the Royal Yugoslav Air Force (Serbo-Croatian: Vazduhoplovstvo vojske Kraljevine Jugoslavije, VVKJ) and the Royal Aero Club of Yugoslavia sent aspiring aeronautical engineers to France to develop their knowledge. It was intended that after this advanced training, they would return to Yugoslavia and be offered specialist roles in the VVKJ or in the aeronautical industry. Ljubomir Ilić and Kosta Sivčev went through this program, but when they returned to Yugoslavia, both were employed in administrative work. Frustrated by this, in 1931 they decided to design a replacement for the Czechoslovakian-built Avia BH-33E biplane fighter then in service with the VVKJ. Working in a basement in Belgrade, then in Ilić's apartment in Novi Sad, they devoted their spare time to secretly working on their design. Their original concept was for a low-wing monoplane with a retractable undercarriage, but contemporary thinking led them to modify their initial design into a strut-braced high-wing monoplane armed with a hub-firing and fuselage-mounted synchronised machine guns. The gull-wing design emphasised power and manoeuvrability over other characteristics.
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