Experiences with the first generation of jet fighters had revealed unsuspected problems involved with high-speed flight and Ilyushin devoted much effort to mitigate them.

The long and thin unswept wing was conventional in appearance, but it was shaped to improve lateral stability at high angles of attack and to prevent the onset of tip stall.

To counter this Sergey Ilyushin and his team developed a new manufacturing technique that reversed the traditional practice where the internal supporting members were affixed to the assembly jig and the aircraft's skin panels were then attached.

This new technique did impose a small weight penalty but had the unexpected advantage of greatly accelerating the assembly process, as the internal equipment could be installed before the halves were joined together.

[5] Neither the thin wing nor the engine nacelles offered any place to store the main landing gear so the fuselage was designed as a flattened oval to give them as wide a track as possible.

[6] A 23-millimetre (0.91 in) Nudelman-Suranov NS-23 autocannon with 150 rounds was fixed on the lower starboard side of the nose; it was fired by the pilot who had a primitive ring sight to use for aiming.

During the latter part of the manufacturer's flight tests the Il-22 made the first-ever Soviet jet-assisted (rocket-assisted, RATO) takeoff on 7 February 1948 with a pair of SR-2 boosters.

As the thrust of the engines could not be increased in a timely manner Ilyushin made the decision not to submit the bomber for state acceptance trials as its performance did not meet the requirements laid down for it in 1946.