Lavochkin La7

NII VVS, are you still around with more excellent information on Drevisina, B3 and Schpon? It would be fascinating to compare Soviet and deHavilland monocoque timber construction techniques. 

Necrothread has become a zombie thread!

I’ve read in Geoff Goodall’s Warbirds Directory that an unidentified La-7 is being restored to fly in Russia for a private owner. Does anyone have any info on this project?

Also I may be a decade late but I just wanted to point out the immaculate La-9 in flanker_man‘s post is an La-11.

Older. And still astonished by the figures…

…even if we only consider Soviet ‘kills’ that doesn’t leave much for other Soviet fighters?

Is 2015 Creaking Door older and wiser?

Ah, but you’re quoting 2011 Creaking Door…

…2015 Creaking Door could have mellowed and have a different opinion of those figures!

Ha! – didn’t look at the date. So you find them less astonishing currently 😉

Ah, but you’re quoting 2011 Creaking Door…

…2015 Creaking Door could have mellowed and have a different opinion of those figures!

Presumably that number was the number of aircraft in service and losses would therefore have been constantly renewed by replacements? I rather doubt it means they only had 1850 aircraft during that time.

Yes, but numbers continued to decline as more were diverted to the Defence of the Reich, lack of pilots and fuel. The La-7 accounting for 3,400 plus ( conservatively) smacks of Soviet Propaganda and massive over claiming. As Creaking Door points out it as an astonishing number – providing proof and verification of these ‘claims’ would be an equally massive undertaking I am sure.

Yeah, those Yak drivers must have been upset that the La 7 shot down the entire Luftwaffe 😉

Luftwaffe combat aircraft on the ENTIRE Eastern front in May 1944 was 1850 aircraft, dropping to 1400 by January 1945.

Presumably that number was the number of aircraft in service and losses would therefore have been constantly renewed by replacements?I guess that doesn´t mean they only had 1850 aircraft during that time.

That seems an astonishing number of ‘proven claims’ for a fighter aircraft that only entered service in October 1944…

…I’m not doubting the excellence of the aircraft or the skill (and courage) of its pilots but were there actually that many enemy aircraft for the La-7 to shoot down at that time?

Yeah, those Yak drivers must have been upset that the La 7 shot down the entire Luftwaffe 😉

Luftwaffe combat aircraft on the ENTIRE Eastern front in May 1944 was 1850 aircraft, dropping to 1400 by January 1945.

I too, often wonder if The Fighter Collection still have their La-11 ?

Was it Lee Proudfoot that flew the La-9 once then pronounced afterwards “never again”!?

Rob

Lavochkin La-9 at Duxford Flying Legends 2003

The guy on the left is (or was?) the head honcho at the Russian Aviation Museum at Monino.

He used to greet us off the coach with brochures of Monino for sale.

… just dug one out – with his autograph inside – V. Kazashvili

Ken

Ah gotcha!

Thanks for the quick reply.

I think that may be our very own Mark 12…

Whilst we’re on the subject, do The Fighter Collection still have their Lavochkin/LaGG?

A couple of old Russian fighter pilots?

Well one of ’em is. 🙂

Mark

Hi,

Sorry for the necropost- but who is the tall man in the photo?

Thanks!

Dear me..! We could do many threads on Soviet 1930-40s wood construction methods, so I will attempt to very briefly summarise them here:

Delta Drevesina— this was a wood-plastic material used for heavy constructional elements, usually wing spars and such like. It consisted of carefully selected sections of spruce impregnated with a complex phenol-formaldehyde resin (thought to be Novolac type, but recipe unknown). The units were cured under pressure in a special kiln, of which there is no known surviving example.

Shpon— was a sheeting material used for skinning aircraft, and of such strength that the resulting structures were usually of monocoque design. Shpon was made by laying cross-grained veneers of birch strip impregnated with resin (composition again unknown) over a thin sheet of Bakelite on one or both sides. The laminate was then cured under heat and pressure (the top half of one such ‘press’ existed for years in Ufa, but no complete unit is known). This process could be repeated for greater thickness, if desired.

All of these timber products would subsequently be covered by resin-impregnated strips of fabric on the aircraft. This outer covering acted quite a bit like fibreglass, as one might imagine. All of the resins used were noted for their flame resistant properties, and one may hold a match or candle under any of these materials and they will not ‘burn’ (in the usual sense– they char and blacken).

The earlier, ” low-technology” methods of wooden construction as seen on the MiG-3 or I-16 fuselages (for example) employed strips of spruce sheet glued and sealed into place using a product known as “VIAM B3” (these surfaces would also subsequently be covered with resin-fabric). This was both a glue and a sealant, and the when dry could be sanded smooth. ‘B3’ was used on Lavochkin products to cover the fuselage before the application of the resin-fabric strips, just for extra strength (as was evident in the Czech testing).

Sadly, the exact nature of ‘B3’ has also been lost. This proved to be a great difficulty for the various Warbird I-16s which were built in Novosibirsk (for NZ). No modern material which was immediately evident and available could do the same job, and so to obtain the manufacturer’s specified strength parameters, the structures ended up weighing fully 25% more than they should do. This result should not seen to be careless, let me add– there simply was no product available to the engineers to replace ‘B3’ adequately.

Remarkably– and one is inclined to add, “stupidly”– all of these excellent methods were apparently discarded and forgotten with the advent of all-metal construction. What a very short-sided and inept development, but that is a matter for another discussion….

Thanks everyone for this insight into a fighter which is less well known in the West. And Flankerman you deserve top marks for photography in torrential rain.

Can anyone confirm that this is an La-9? I took it at DX FL in I think 2005 (the first airshow I ever attended on my own).

That is a Yak-11 reconfigured with a single cockpit and a P&W R-2000 up front.

Quite simply, the La-7 was utterly superb. It was also made of complex wood-laminate and wood-plastic products which no one has managed to reproduce since the 1940’s. There are no commonly available “modern” materials with suitably useful properties which might be used instead. Ergo, I wonder if we ever will see a flying La-7 (amongst others)?

During the war…

I entered this thread with the intentions of sharing my experiences with the La-7 in Oleg Maddox’ IL-2 series, but I can see you have it covered, this is some excellent information! Of course, i’m joking :p

Can anyone confirm that this is an La-9? I took it at DX FL in I think 2005 (the first airshow I ever attended on my own).

You’d think there’d be some La’7’s flying around, with their excellent reputation as an uberplane, it’s such a shame that none seem to be.

Does anyone know of any airworthy Lagg-3 or La-5 aircraft?