The Soviet Air Force or Voyenno-Vozdushnye Sily was the official air force of the Soviet Union during WWII. It was first founded in 1918 and remained the official air force of the Soviet Union until the destruction of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. In its early days, the air force suffered greatly by the Soviet Union's great purges. However, it managed to modernize enough so that use of more modern aircraft, such as the Ilyushin DB-3 (Il-4) bomber for example, could be implemented.