The Ilyushin Il-28 (Russian: Илью́шин Ил-28; NATO reporting name: Beagle) is a jet bomber of the immediate postwar period that was originally manufactured for the Soviet Air Forces.

[6] Western intelligence focused on the four-engine developments while the twin-engine Ilyushin Il-28 was created to meet a requirement for a bomber to carry a 3,000 kilograms (6,600 lb) bombload at 800 kilometres per hour (500 mph).

The gunner sat in a separate compartment at the rear of the fuselage, operating a power driven turret armed with two Nudelman-Suranov NS-23 23 mm cannons with 250 rounds each.

[9] While the pilot and navigator sat on ejector seats, the gunner had to parachute out of a hatch in the floor in the event of an emergency.

[13][14] The first prototype, powered by two imported Nenes, made its maiden flight on 8 July 1948, with Vladimir Kokkinaki at the controls.

[20] Two Egyptian Il-28s may have been shot down near Sanaa by Royal Saudi Air Force Hawker Hunters flown by British pilots, in 1966.

[21] The Soviet Union was in the process of providing the type for local assembly in Cuba when this was halted by the Cuban Missile Crisis, after which Nikita Khrushchev agreed to remove them.

The supersonic Yak-28 was introduced in the early 1960s to take over the Beagle's low-level attack role; some Il-28 variants lingered in Soviet service into the 1980s.

The People's Republic of China received over 250 Soviet-built Il-28s from 1952,[24] and when the Sino-Soviet split occurred in the late 1950s, it decided to place the Il-28 into production, despite no manufacturing license being obtained.

[26] Chinese-built Il-28s designated H-5 and built by HAMC were still flying in the 1990s with several hundreds in China itself, and a smaller number in North Korea and Romania.

The type is known to still be in active service with the North Korean Air Force, although little is known as to whether they are a mix of survivors from the batch of 24 Soviet-manufactured aircraft delivered in the 1960s and some of the newer Chinese-built H-5 variant, or are solely H-5s.