Re: First Yak9 shot down
Andrey, Nikita, thank you. In this case Barabanov flew Yak-9 S/N: 0115330, while Bykov flew 0415316. Soviet regiment diaries, etc. very often used only the short version of the AC serial numbers, ignoring the factory number part. (Only batch and plane in batch no.) It was sometimes painted on the fin of the plane with dash, eg.:
S/N: "0115330" = "0130" = "01-30". (All the same plane.)
It is easy to know if these planes were built in Novosibirsk, or Omsk as these two main Yak-9 aircraft factories made their serial numbers in a different way:
Factory 153 (Novosibirsk): xx153yy (Most of Yak-9B, Yak-9D, Yak-9DD, Yak-9T, - and after batch No.25: Yak-9M fighters)
Factory 166 (Omsk): xx166yyy (Most of Yak-9D, Yak-9R, Yak-9U fighters)
...where x=digits of batch No., y=digits of plane within that batch.
So a 4 digit serial, like Barabanov's 0130 was from Novosibirk as 0115330, but a 5 digit serial, like 16036 (мл.л-т Андреев Арсений Емельянович's (KIA, 17 VA, 288 IAD, 659 IAP) Yak-9D on December 22, 1944 in Hungary) was No.16166036 from the Omsk factory.
This means that eg. Yak-9 No."01153001" never existed, only 0115301, or 01166001. I hope this helps.
Gabor
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