The armament of the LaGG3 S4
I would like to point out what I believe to be an error in the armament of the LaGG3 S4.
Originally the LaGG3 was to be armed with the Taubin MP-6 23mm gun.
However the recoil of this weapon proved to be 2.5 times greater then expected, something that besides playing an important role in the arrest end execution of the designers, caused early LaGGs to be armed with a third 12.7 mm gun firing though the propeller's hub.
So early in its career the plane had 2x7.62mm and 3x12.7mm guns.
This can be seen in many photographs.
Starting from the fouth batch, one UBS 12.7 mm was replaced with a 20mm ShVAK (actually some planes had the earlier armament, pending the availabily of 20mm guns).
However in order to save weight with the installation of the 20mm gun LaGG3s were no longer fitted with the starbord 12.7 mm gun.
This is quoted in Lavochkin's Piston-Engined Fighters (Gordon), Soviet Combat Aircraft of the Second World War Vol.I (Gordon and Khazanov) and LaGG Fighters in Action (Stapfer).
I checked several pics of LaGG3s from the aforementioned books, and I could not find any with the 20mm gun and that showed the starbord 12.7 mm UBS. On the other end I found two pics of LaGG3 S4 fitted with the nose 20mm where the starbord hole for the 12.7mm was clearly closed - and none of a 5 weapons LaGG3 with the 20mm.
If we consider that later LaGG3s had only the 20mm and the port 12.7mm and that in the summer 1941 Russian engineers were desperately trying to reduce weight on a very unsatisfactory LaGG3, it makes sense to believe that the correct armament of the LaGG3 S4 was 2x7.62mm, 1x12.7mm and 1x20mm.
It would be very easy to correct.
Best regards
Koenig
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