The Tomashevich Pegas was a World War II Soviet ground attack prototype aircraft built before the Battle of Kursk (1943), designed to destroy tanks and German vehicles.
[1] Dmitri Lyudvigovich Tomashevich was the chief designer on the Polikarpov I-180 fighter before the crash of the prototype, killing test pilot Valery Chkalov, led to Tomashevich being arrested and sent to a NKVD-run Special Prison in January 1939, where he assisted Andrei Tupolev in the design of the Tupolev Tu-2.
[1] The resulting design was a low-wing monoplane with a fixed tail-wheel undercarriage, of wooden construction, with pine frames and birch plywood skins.
The pilot sat in an open cockpit which was protected by mild-steel armour plating designed to withstand 12.7 mm (0.50 in) bullets.
[1][2] The first prototype, Pegas-01, made its maiden flight in late 1942, proving to be overweight and underpowered, although the aircraft's handling was acceptable.