Red Air Force fuselage numbering

[Graham Boak]

I've seen it said that the large numbers on the sides of the Lavochkin fighters were the last two of the full production number. Hence numbers can be an apparently random mix of high and low, and you can find two aircraft in the same unit with the same number. (I must admit here that the one photo I can point to is of MiG 21s....but I believe it to be true of Lavochkins too.)

I've also seen on a Yak (Storrar's?) the same geometric symbol as seen on Soviet tanks, where the top number is said to represent the unit and the lower the individual tank.

Neither method seems to match these SB numbers, though they could perhaps be a mix of batch and aircraft-in-batch numbers, although three figures seems high for either. 1/A just has to be an oddball!