Thanks for posting. Just a side note but to me that plane looks a lot like a B-26. For some reason.
“...to me that plane looks a lot like a B-26...” [OKSooner, post 12]
The resemblance of the images posted to Martin’s B-26 is pretty weak. Beyond a glassed-in nose (which in the B-26 was of different shape & smaller extent), two panel windscreen, dorsal turret, and single vertical stabilizer, nothing really matches.
It’s tough to tell from the posted images, but the closest match appears to be the Ilyushin Il-4, earlier versions of which were called DB-3. Expert analysts divide their opinion on a number of Soviet aircraft from WW2’s earlier days.
Martin’s B-26 had a nosewheel, while no Soviet medium bomber of the day was equipped with anything except tailwheel undercarriage. In the B-26, there was no dorsal extension to the control cabin as seen in the posted image.
Missing from the posted image are the B-26’s air intakes, mounted at 10 and 2 o’clock on the upper edge of each engine cowl, with squared openings.
Furthermore, the posted image shows a low-wing airframe, while the B-26 had a shoulder-mounted wing.
Martin built over 5,200 B-26s. Outside their USAAF service, they equipped UK, Free French, South African, and Turkish forces. None were supplied to the USSR.
The Soviets liked some Western aircraft and copied when they felt like doing so, making over 6000 Li-2s under license (DC-3/C-47), and over 800 Tu-4s, copies of Boeing’s B-29. If they copied the B-26, little is known about the project in the West.
More than one Allied warplane of the early 1940s bears some resemblance to the B-26. North American built the XB-28, a pressurized high-altitude bomber originally intended to replace the B-25. It had a fuselage of circular cross-section, glassed nose, radial engines with nacelles that were big enough to stow the main under carriage when it retracted, and a large single vertical fin. Never got beyond the experimental stage.