Why I dislike IL-2 games..

[winny]

This always makes me smile..

LA-7 could out turn, out climb and was faster than the FW190 (which out classed all spitfires up till the IX).

Because it's largley overlooked in the west people assume that because it's Russian it can't be any good. For some reason most Russian technology seems to have an 'agricultural' feel when it comes to design but you can't tell how a plane will fly by just looking into it's cockpit..

The Yak-3 was also a very ggod dogfighter and was the subject of a luftwaffe warning to it's pilots not to engage in low level combat 'with Yakovlev fighters lacking an air cooler under the nose' (a reference to the Yak-1 which was slower and less agile).

Free french pilot Marcel Ablert (top french ace) Flew Dewotine d520's, Spitfires with 340 Sqn and Yak-3s in the USSR. He reckoned that the Yak-3 was superior to both the Spitfire and the P51-D.

The russians had their fair share of poor aircraft.. Like the LaGG-3 which was know as the (La)kirovanny (g)arantirovanny (g)rob or Varnished guaranteed coffin by VVS pilots.
But they also had a couple of really good aircraft.

The P-51 in game is broken, sadly.