i-185

[IceFire]

Treetop is right. The aircraft was, by all accounts anyways, performing very well but delays and the crashes of two prototypes pretty much ended the types chances of making it into production. That and the La-5 production was already underway with similarly promising performance numbers.

I think its the nature of the aircraft too. Usually the "coach built" prototypes of most Soviet aircraft were very high performing but the transition into serial production usually eliminated a lot of the performance for actual in combat service. To some extent this happened with all nations (the prototypes often didn't have armament, radios, armor plate, all the stuff that weighs you down). So the I-185 is a good example of what a very well built version would probably perform like. If it went to serial production I'm willing to bet it would have lost some of its performance.