Soviet fighters and 4.12

[IceFire]

Originally Posted by JG52Karaya

Problem with the La-5/7 series is their overly high topspeeds which are partly based on the "etalon" production standard setting prototypes (of which no serial produced machine ever had hopes to reproduce performances)

La-5: 20kmh too fast at all altitudes (550kmh ingame @ SL vs 525kmh IRL, 600kmh ingame @ altitude vs 580kmh IRL)

This was the very first version of the La-5 introduced around the Battle of Stalingrad and was lacking a lot in performance, even the LaGG-3S66 was deemed a better fighter at the time! The first non slotted versions took 25s for a full turn, later slotted models needed 22s - putting them in a disadvantaged position compared to the Bf109s of the time (109F, early G)

La-5F: sea level speed ok, speed at altitude 20kmh too fast (620kmh ingame vs 600 IRL)

La-5FN: OK speed-wise for a '44 model, ingame it is labelled '43 and would thus need a 20kmh speed reduction

La-7: sea level speed ok, speed at altitude 25kmh too fast (685 ingame vs 660 IRL)

That all sounds pretty reasonable to me in terms of fixes for the series. I'm saying this uncritically as I haven't done the research myself but it does seem reasonable.

1984, what do you think? Russian sources suggest similarly? For a long time it's been that top level performance is what's accepted but serial level production top performance I would think is preferable to prototypes.

I've known this for a while but an additional La-5FN, 1944 to add to the La-5FN,1943 would allow for historical scenarios using the FN at different points in the campaign. So far as I know, no 3D model changes... just performances.