Lavochkin-Gorbunov-Goudkov LaGG-3

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Image:LaGG-3.jpg The Lavochkin-Gorbunov-Goudkov LaGG-3 (Лавочкин-Горбунов-Гудков ЛаГГ-3) was a Soviet fighter aircraft of World War II. It was a refinement of the earlier LaGG-1, and was one of the most modern aircraft available to the Soviet Air Force at the time of Germany's invasion.

The central deficiency of the LaGG-1 design was a lack of power. The first attempt to rectify this was to install a more powerful version of its Klimov M-105 engine. In itself, this change did not help very much, and without an alternative powerplant, the only solution was to lighten the airframe. The LaGG design team re-examined the design and pared down the structure as much as possible. They also added fixed slats to the wings to improve climb and manoeuvrability and further weight was saved by installing lighter armament. The LaGG-3 replaced the LaGG-1 on production lines immediately. Circle time: 20 sec.

The result was still disappointing, as even with the lighter airframe and supercharged engine, the LaGG-3 was still underpowered and proved immensely unpopular with the pilots assigned to fly it. The novel, wood-laminate construction of the aircraft continued to be a quality-control problem (as it had been with its predecessor) and pilots joked that rather than being an acronym of the designers' names (Lavochkin, Gorbunov, and Goudkov) "LaGG" stood for lakirovanny garantirovanny grob ("guaranteed varnished coffin" - лакированный гарантированный гроб). Some aircraft supplied to the front line were up to 40km/h (25 mph) slower than they should have been, and some were even supplied in an unairworthy condition. Despite all this, the fighter still acquitted itself well against the Luftwaffe's Bf 109Es, largely through an ability to absorb massive amounts of damage.

The LaGG-3 was constantly improved and updated during its production run, resulting in 66 minor variants within the 6,258 that were eventually built. Experiments with fitting a large radial engine to the LaGG-3 airframe finally solved the power problem, and led to the superb Lavochkin La-5.

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