Back in 1939, Berive was ordered to design and develop a successor for the promising yet disappointing Beriev Be-2 (KOR-1) which should overcome the numerous problems the Be-2 presented during its operational life.
The new aircraft, which received the internal designation of KOR-2, flew for the first time on 21st October 1940 at Beriev's main factory in Taganrog, Rostov.
It was an elegant, parasol-winged monoplane with a slight inverse-gull wing wing with the engine, a radial Shvetsov M-62 which yielded 1000hp (746Kw) of power, mounted in a nacelle above the fuselage to have enough clearance for the propellers.
The testing process continued through January 1941, when it was ordered to commence its mass manufcaturation, under the designation of Beriev Be-4, however, due to the German invasion of the USSR, in June 1941, only two of them were completed. Due to the war, the factory was dismantled and moved to Omsk first and later, in May 1943, to Krasnoyarsk where production was resumed until late 1945 with a total of 46 or 47 exemplars produced.
It was armed with a fixed forward firing 0.3in (7.62mm) ShKAS machine-gun in the nose and one defensive flexible rearward firing 0.3in ShKAS machine gun placed inside an MV-5 turret. It could carry up to four FAB-100 bombs, depth charges, RS-82 unguided missiles, or four RS-132 unguided missiles.
It served on board every cruiser of the Soviet Black Sea fleet from 1942 where it was used in various roles like coastal reconnaissance (role where it operated also from shore bases under the Soviet Navy command) anti-submarine and even transport duties. It served on board many Soviet cruisers like Maxim Gorki, Kirov, Molotov and Kalinin (among others) during World War II and even during the early post war period when it was gradually being replaced with naval reconnaissance helicopters like the Kamov Ka-8 and Ka-10.
Sources:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beriev_Be-4
2. http://www.airpages.ru/eng/ru/kor2.shtml
3. https://forum.valka.cz/topic/view/161411
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