Soviet fighters and 4.12

[Z1024]

Lagg3 specs table here: http://www.airpages.ru/ru/la3_4.shtml
Or google-translated (pretty close BTW):
http://translate.google.com/translat....shtml&act=url

Russian Wikipedia has some more or less detailed specs too: http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9B%...80.D0.B8.D1.8F

Quite close to the above.

There are so many modifications and I can't really map them, but Il2 compare specs look pretty close. Top speeds vary, but close, turn time is basically spot on. Not sure about low speed handling - it this is quantifiable at all...

The 1st article says the plane was pretty average - not really better than other soviet planes of the era. Late models were clearly inferior to the La5FN and La7 in pretty much everything.

It also says its vices were ironed out around 1943 but it was still inferior to the German planes.

So it was the M82 engine that basically saved the LaGG airframe turning it into La5

The other potent soviet fighter was the i185 that had a potential to become the best soviet fighter of the war - modern type, high wing loading, very powerful engine (2000-2200hp for the M71 version) however the M71 engine never went into large scale production and was unreliable. As far as I understand Yakovlev did everything he could to kill off any competition and he succeeded in this case and almost succeeded in the La5s case, but La5 was just too good, and eventually went into production.

BTW the 185 turns too well in the game for a high wing loaded plane.
this article: http://www.airpages.ru/dc/i185front.shtml
indicates the turn time @1000m was 22-23s but in the game it is around 19.5-20s. a 10% decrease. I'd say its pretty significant. I'd expect a more FW-like behavior given its weight of ~ 3700kg.