Talk:Lavochkin-Gorbunov-Gudkov LaGG-3

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Armament

I take issue with the opening paragraph, where it says it has a "BK machine gun" and two 7.62mm ShKAS machine guns and was therefore heavily armed compared to other Soviet fighters. This is untrue. First, I have no idea what a "BK machine gun is, but the closest I can come with is a UBK machine gun, which is a 12.7mm machine gun. At this time, the Polikarpov I-16 was being given twin 20mm ShVAK cannons as well as twin ShKAS machine guns, and the contemporary Yak-1 fighter had a single ShVAK and two ShKAS. The MiG-3 had the same armament, a single 12.7mm and two 7.62mm machine guns, and it's always derided for being "far too lightly armed", so I'm not sure how the LaGG-3 with identical guns came to considered by anyone "more heavily armed than most Soviet fighters". I think I'm going to delete that mention, as it's subjective anyway, and assume that the author meant the UBK machine gun, as I know nothing about any "BK" machine gun (other than Germany's later-war "BK 3,7" 37mm cannon and such).45Colt 00:00, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

Underpowered?

"Even with the lighter airframe and revised supercharged engine, the LaGG-3 was underpowered."

Has anyone a good reference explaining why this turned out so? The specs in the article give a wing loading of 31 psf and a power/mass of .21 hp/lb. The Yak-1b was reasonably well regarded, and the Wikipedia article for it gives 34 psf and .19 hp/lb, both inferior to those given for the LaGG-3. I suspect there were aerodynamic woes in the LaGG-3, but these aren't brought out in the article. The Yak-1 article gives some hints, such as "due to the manufacturer's inexperience with its special wooden construction which suffered from warping and rotting" but this is incomplete. I have no reference for the LaGG-3, so I can't provide the answers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Karlwk (talk • contribs) 02:27, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

The Yak-1 was a complete disaster that couldn't even pass most national tests and had a tendency to simply break apart mid-air(no joke). The only reason why it was ever put into production was the fact that Yakovlev was Stalin's favourite. Compare LaGG-3 with something decent, like the venerable I-16 for example - almost the same power-to-weight ratio and LaGG-3 is over 50% heavier! And that was done with I-16's weaker engine and superior armament seven years before LaGG-3. LaGG-3's fully wooden construction was simply too heavy to be of any real use, not to mention the plethora of other problems with a wooden plane such as difficult and time consuming construction and impossible maintenance. Fun fact: soviet pilot's nickname of LaGG-3 was a semi-backronym of "лакированный гарантированный гроб", roughly translated to "lacquerated guaranteed grave". 77.114.8.255 (talk) 09:15, 21 September 2016 (UTC)