[HGabor]

I do not know. There is no such permanent loss. Probably damaged, but not lost. What I know is that on October 1, 1944 (in 1944/4. quarterly plane/mechanical report to VVS HQ.) the 5 VA had only 17 Yak-3s. (The rest was Yak-1B, Yak-9T, -9D, -9M)

All of them were assigned to the 13. GvIAD. (149, 150 and 151. GvIAP) Most of them -if not all- went to the 150. GvIAP. On October 27, 1944 they lost Knut in Yak-3, S/N: 3912 (3929212), on November 13, 1944 they lost Kireev in Yak-3, S/N: 3518 (3529218). By January 1, 1945 5 VA, 6. GvIAD Stab. received Yak-3, S/N: 1712 (1729212). At this point 5 VA had 16 Saratov-built Yak-3s in combat service. Later they started to receive Yak-3s from Tbilisi, factory No.31 (eg. 310197, 310306), and their number kept increasing in 1945.

Gabor

PS: 'official' Saratov (Factory No.292)-built Yak-3 serial numbers had four digits: xxyy where xx was plane ID, yy was batch number. For some reason 5 VA added in their papers factory number (292) in the centre of the plane serial, so eg. Yak-3 No.3518 was in 5 VA documents '3529218', etc. They added the factory number just like yy153xx for Novosibirsk, Factory No.153-built Yak-9s, eg: Yak-9M, S/N: 2715317 (From batch No.25 it was Yak-9M) Tbilisi, plant No.31-built Yak-3s had six digits in their serials: 31yyxx, like: 310306, etc. The plane ID number was painted on the Yak-3s still at (both) factories to make the job of the frontline ground-crews easier, so the Yak-3s arrived already with painted tactical numbers. On the airfields they just applied the regiment, squadron markings, colors. Yak-3 S/N: 310306 was therefore tactical No. white '06', etc. In rare cases when 2 planes had the same plane ID (from different batches) within a regiment, usually they quickly added a simple extra digit to one of the planes, eg. one was white '26' and the other one became white '126'. In non-stop combat operations planes came and got lost very quickly, so there was no reason to use a complicated method to mark them. Squadrons sometimes overpainted the existing tactical numbers in their own color, eg. yellow, or red.