Luftwaffe reports on downed Lavochkins

[Evgeny Velichko]

Differences:

LaGG-3 (german identificate this as LaGG-3 or just LaGG)


La-5 - La-5F (german identificate La-5 as LaGG-5 or LaGG-9)


La-5F - La-5FN (german identificate this as La-5)


La-5FN - La-7 (german identificate this as La-5 or very rare as La-7)


As You can see, there is lack of visual differences between La5FN and La-7, and it was very easy to misidentificate.

About colour marking of spinnercowl - AFAIK, there are following colours in Polk (equal german Gruppe) - as it was in 9 GvIAP:
1 Eskadrilya (Staffel) - red
2 Eskadrilya (Staffel) - blue
3 Eskadrilya (Staffel) - Yellow

At least red cowl markings of La-7 were used in following regiments:
2 GvIAP,9 GvIAP, 32 GvIAP, 41 GvIAP, 63 GvIAP, 111 GvIAP, 176 GvIAP.

A little OT: 2 Franek Grabowski:

...thus allowing pilot to concentrate on combat, Soviet aircraft still required a lot of manual adjusting. Eg. young pilots often set their radiators fully open just to avoid overheating...

You are NOT right. I can proove it, if You want.
According veterans memories, it was not serious problem to control manually all sistems in dogfight for them even when they were very young and unexpirienced pilots because it was so well trained IN EVERY pilot school, that in dogfight could swich all controls "automatically", without loosing concentration.

MAY be You are thinking that La-5 & La-7 was a "bad" fighter... But german pilots, who was shot down by La's, disagree with You And dont forget that top scored Allied ace was pilot of La-5, La-5FN and La-7 - I.N.Kogedub.