Warbird Information Exchange

Interesting thread...

Always liked the Lavochkins. Maybe it's because they remind me a bit of Sea Furies...

Herewith another of my longstanding crackpot ideas. Ever look at the wing planform of the Yak-3/11 and the La-5/7 in comparison? They're not identical, of course, but they are visually similar. Could not one obtain a set of, say, Yak-11 wings, and fit them to a newbuild La-5/7 fuselage (powering the result with an R2600, since the M-82 owed something to the two-row Cyclone)? This idea has probably been helped along in my wild-n-wacky mind by all the Kozhedub's-La7-style paintjobs applied to Pratt-engined Yaks in the past 15 years or so...the Yak-3UPW already kinda looks like a Lavochkin. But with all the Yaks flying now, and a MiG-3 having flown recently as well, wouldn't it be cool to see an equally historic wartime Lavochkin flying too?

Never saw "Mr.Awesome" other than in photos in mags...but, esthetically as well as practically, the T-33 tail feathers were a stroke of genius. The profiles match the Yak wing so well they look at a glance like both sections came from the same pen...better-matched visually than the Yak wing and the original tail! In its final form that racer looked to me very like the Hughes H-1 after a few sessions at BALCO... Hope she reappears someday.

S.

The R-2800 engined Yak-11 is "Czech Mate" (Czech built?) According to one report I read about Reno Gold Unl. last year, it was the only non-Hawker to take the czeckered flag.

Canso42