Sergey Ilyushin: A Foreigner Who Visited the Juku

2018/11/13

On October 5, 1967 (Showa 42), Sergey Ilyushin visited Keio University. Since his official title was the former rector of Leningrad University, one of the most influential universities in the Soviet Union, his visit was to the Mita Campus. He was welcomed by President Kunio Nagasawa and Eiichi Kiyooka, who was in charge of international relations. However, as will be explained later, he was an authority on aeronautical engineering and one of the most important figures representing the aircraft industry that supported the Soviet bloc since World War II. Therefore, officials from the Faculty of Engineering in Koganei, including Hiroshi Kuno (later President), Ichiro Watanabe, Sumio Umezawa (Dean of the Faculty of Engineering), and others, also welcomed and attended to him. At Mita, a reception was held after an informal talk with those involved.

Sergey Vladimirovich Ilyushin was born in 1894 in Dilyalevo, Vologda Governorate, Imperial Russia, and served as a pilot in World War I. He became a member of the Communist Party in 1918 after the Russian Revolution and began to distinguish himself around 1919 when he became an air force technical officer for the Red Army. He obtained an engineering degree from the Air Force Academy in 1926 and became a professor at his alma mater in 1948.

His main achievement was his work in aircraft design, and the Ilyushin Il-2 and Il-4 aircraft he designed contributed greatly to the Soviet Air Force during World War II. It is said that 36,000 Ilyushin aircraft were manufactured, making it understandable that he became an exceptionally famous figure in the global aviation world. After World War II, he also designed the Il-18 and Il-62 passenger aircraft that bear his name. The Il-62 was said to have excellent safety, but its fuel efficiency was poor, leading to the design of an improved version (62M). The improved Il-62 was highly regarded as a masterpiece and was used for many years as official aircraft for heads of state in the former Soviet bloc.

The S.V. Ilyushin Aviation Complex (founded in 1933, now a joint-stock company) bearing his name is the largest aircraft manufacturer in the former Soviet and Russian spheres and remains one of the world's leading aircraft manufacturers to this day. It produced numerous famous aircraft that supported the peak of the former Soviet Union during and after the war, and later Russia. Even now, they are used as military aircraft not only in Russia but also in China, North Korea, and other countries. It was reported that an Ilyushin Il-62 official aircraft flew in for President Putin's visit to Japan in 2016 and, more recently, for North Korean Chairman Kim Jong-un's visit to Singapore in June 2018. However, it appears that the Ilyushin aircraft carried the entourage, while Chairman Kim was on a Boeing aircraft.

Sergey Ilyushin became a member of the USSR Academy of Sciences and received numerous decorations multiple times, including the Stalin Prize and the Order of Lenin, and became a Hero of Socialist Labor. He passed away in 1977, ten years after his visit to Japan, and was buried in Moscow's famous Novodevichy Cemetery. Many graves of prominent figures, such as Stalin's wife and cosmonauts, are located here.

As a side note, his son Vladimir Ilyushin was also a famous aviation pilot in the former Soviet Union. There was a rumor for a time that he had attempted a space flight before Gagarin, the world's first astronaut, and had crash-landed in China, but this appears to have been a false report.

After World War II, GHQ, centered on the U.S. military, issued an order banning research into aeronautical engineering in Japan. Excellent scholars and researchers remaining at the University of Tokyo's Department of Aeronautics and the Aeronautical Research Institute moved to private universities such as Keio University and Nihon University, or to private companies, while research facilities, equipment, and testing devices were scrapped, transferred, or placed in custody. During the author's student days in the late 1950s, several such professors were still teaching at the Koganei Campus of the Faculty of Engineering, and the equipment was being used for practical training.

At the time of Ilyushin's visit to Japan, the Cold War between the Western and Soviet blocs was ongoing, and it is imagined that there were many difficulties in the invitation procedures. On this occasion, he visited Japan as an exchange professor with Waseda University. The person who served as the coordinator was Tsunezo Sato, a professor at Waseda University's Faculty of Science and Engineering and a lecturer at the Juku's Faculty of Engineering.

In 1968, the year after Ilyushin's visit, when three influential professors from the Soviet Union participated in the International Conference on the Properties of Steam held with Keio Professor Ichimatsu Tanishita as chairman, I, as a committee secretary, also struggled with the entry procedures. And on the very morning of the first day of this conference, a news flash reported the invasion of Prague by Warsaw Pact and Soviet forces.

Incidentally, research into the properties of steam was an important area of study in the Soviet Union at the time, and the research leader, Vladimir Kirillin, later became the Vice Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and the Minister of Science and Technology, and worked hard to defend the persecuted Andrei Sakharov. Sakharov received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975 and visited the Mita Campus in 1989 to receive an honorary doctorate from Keio University.

Now, another conceivable motive for Ilyushin's 1967 visit to Japan relates to the establishment of Japan Airlines' Moscow route. Through joint Japan-Soviet operations with Aeroflot Soviet Airlines, Japan Airlines finally realized its long-held ambition of opening the Haneda–Moscow route in April 1967. Japan Airlines initially used Soviet Tupolev aircraft, but switched to Ilyushin Il-62 aircraft in 1969, and then to DC-8 aircraft from 1970. ("Records of the 50th Anniversary of the Opening of the JAL Moscow Route").

While Sergey Ilyushin's visit to the Juku is thought to have been arranged by Tsunezo Sato, it may have also been Ilyushin's own wish. This is because the faculty of the Juku's Faculty of Engineering after World War II included prominent people related to aeronautical engineering.

The Juku's Faculty of Engineering was founded in 1939 during the war as the Fujiwara Institute of Technology and was donated to Keio University in 1944, at the end of World War II, when the first class graduated. The first dean of the Fujiwara Institute of Technology was Toyotaro Tanimura, a Navy Technical Lieutenant General. However, most of the school buildings and equipment were lost in air raids by U.S. aircraft toward the end of the war, and there were apparently discussions within Keio University after the war about abolishing the Faculty of Engineering. In fact, the Department of Metallurgical Engineering, which had only recently been established, was abolished.

In the midst of this hardship, Shigeteru Niwa, the former Dean of the Faculty of Engineering at Tokyo Imperial University, was welcomed as the new dean in 1947 to rebuild the Faculty of Engineering. Niwa retired after completing the basic preparation of the Koganei Campus and the faculty, but when I visited him in 1960 to write an article for the student newspaper, he told me the following impressive story:

"The most important thing in a university is the teachers. To rebuild the dying Faculty of Engineering, the first thing I thought of was to invite 'teachers of teachers.' I invited one 'teacher of teachers' to each of the three departments at the time."

And the person invited to the Department of Mechanical Engineering at this time was Toyotaro Suhara. Toyotaro Suhara was one of the members of the investigative committee for establishing the first Department of Aeronautics at the University of Tokyo in 1916. Other members included Aikitsu Tanakadate, Torahiko Terada, and others (Journal of the Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers, "Early Days of Aeronautical Research in Japan and Reminiscences of the Founding of the Aeronautical Research Institute and the Department of Aeronautics," 1961). Incidentally, Aikitsu Tanakadate also studied at Keio University in his youth.

Suhara received the Asahi Prize in fiscal 1929 for the "Invention and Manufacture of a Special High-Speed Motion Picture Camera." This device was capable of filming at 10,000 frames per second and was a world-class invention that allowed for the filming of ultra-high-speed projectiles such as bullets. It is thought to have made a great contribution to aeronautical engineering. Due to the ban on aeronautical engineering by the occupation forces, this ultra-high-speed filming device had also been moved to the Juku's Koganei Campus. I was shown this device during a student practical training session; it filmed by attaching many pieces of photosensitive film to a disk and rotating it at ultra-high speed. In later years, it was returned to the University of Tokyo.

Suhara was one of the leading figures in Japanese aeronautical engineering and was likely known abroad, but he had already retired from the Juku by the time of Ilyushin's visit. The Juku's Department of Mechanical Engineering also included Ichiro Watanabe and others. During the war, Watanabe was engaged in the development of superchargers for world-record long-distance aircraft at the University of Tokyo's Aeronautical Research Institute, and moved to the Juku after the dissolution of the institute by GHQ ("Journal of the Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers Roundtable Discussion Records (1942)," "Koku Fan" magazine, etc.).

In addition, the Juku's Faculty of Engineering included Fushiki Kito, known for submarine vibration isolation, and Tsuyoshi Sato, who had participated in the development of Japan's first jet engine at Nakajima Aircraft. Several other people involved in wartime aeronautical engineering, such as Mineo Yamamoto, also taught as part-time lecturers.

Furthermore, while the occupation forces ordered the disposal of equipment and devices from wartime military research, or they were scrapped due to research bans, some important devices were transferred to and preserved at the Koganei Campus.

For example, while the fuselage of the world-record-setting long-distance aircraft from the Aeronautical Research Institute was reportedly scrapped after being stored at Haneda Airport, one of its engines was stored at the Koganei Campus for a long time after the war. It was brought to the Yagami Campus, but it was a pity that it was later given to another university.

Tsunezo Sato, who arranged Ilyushin's visit to the Juku, made enthusiastic contributions to academic exchange with the Soviet Union during the difficult era of the Cold War. After graduating from the Faculty of Science at Kyoto University before World War II, he acquired Russian while conducting research in applied mathematics in Mukden (now Shenyang) in former Manchuria. After the war, he became a professor at Waseda University and taught applied mathematics as a lecturer at the Juku's Faculty of Engineering.

He was an international scholar famous for his research enthusiasm, often staying overnight. One day, when I opened the door to Professor Sato's office at Waseda University, I was astonished to see pots, plates, and laundry hanging alongside piles of books. Around 1959, the first Russian language course was established at the Juku's Faculty of Engineering at his recommendation, and the lecturer Sato introduced was Yoshio Nozaki, a Waseda University professor with deep knowledge of Russian theater and ballet.