Your response is understandable considering where you're from.
hovewer, that doesn't affect my objectivity in any aspect - that means only that my knowledge on the airwar on the Eastern Front is much greather than on the Western))
The LW was by no means a small force on the Eastern front by 1944, and like it or not the LW DID slaughter the VVS in almost every aerial engagement.
I don't quite understand what do you mean by "slaughtering" - please define it. During the whole year ( 1944), all COMBAT VVS losses were about 7860airplanes, including all aircraft types, not only fighters or bombers.
From that amount more than a half (about 4300) was lost due to ground fire and flak - so their losses in aerial combats were just about 3700( again , of all aircraft types). At the same time, the NON-combat losses were almost 1,6 times higher - 12000 planes. So I don't see any "slaughtering" of VVS by LW at all. Their own pilots after flying scools were the force under which VVS suffered the most .
Now this doesn't mean the LW didn't make any troubles to VVS at all, but their performance esspecialy in the late stage of war is highly overestimated - the western view of the aerial combat on the Eastern front was very one-sided due to understandable reasons.
Esp. the JagdGeschwader's Dora-9's really handed it to the La's Yaks of the VVS, the not even the La-7 proved to be any macth at all.
The FW 190 in general wasn't deployed on the Eastern front in the great numbers - in fact, if you refer to the LW veterans memories , the soviet pilots always emphasized that the most dangerous german aircraft was not the Fw 190 but the Me 109 .
And btw I have Hans Werner Lerche's book, and what he says is that the Bf-109G is both faster, climbs faster and turns better than the La-5FN.
He makes no mention of any supposed superiority of the Yak-3 either, he does note it was a good fighter though, and it was.
I talked only about Yak-3 performance in Rechlin - the La-5FN which was tested by Lerche was one of the early versions with an old engine with a lot of flying hours already made. Then the gasoline type the germans used whas not the same which was recommended to use in Ash-82FN - (87 octanes against 100). No wonder it couldn't achieve the same speed as the serial models in VVS (100 km/h more than the La-5FN in Rechlin).
That doesn't wonder me at all - almost the same story has happened to the Bf 109F-1 which was tested in NII VVS in late 1941 - due to the wrong supercharge settings it couldn't achive the same airspeed at the high altitudes as the original model.
As for Yak-3 , this is a quote from Lerche report :
"My reply to his questions regarding the Yak-3 was that performance
measurement tests had not been made yet, but due to the extremely light weight of
the aircraft combined with the high aerodynamic quality and available engine
power, excellent climb and superior low-level dog-fighting performance might be
expected compared to our Bf 109 and FW 190 fighters. "
The La-7 held nothing over the Bf-109 G-10 except a slightly higher SL speed, thats all, the G-10 was slightly superior in turning performance climb rate.
according to my sources the G-10 has a climb rate about 18 m/s against 18.3 of Lavochkin.
As for turning performance, I don't have an exact numbers on wing loading of G-10 - the WL of G-6 was something about 200 kg/m2, which is 13kg more than a WL of Lavochkin. If you have the exact data, please post it.
A sure way of getting any VVS fighter off your tail according to most 109 pilots was making a steep climbing turn, no VVS could follow that.
the same trick did Kozhedub in his La-7 and even in La -5FN - that all depends on which aircraft type you've encountered as an enemy.
And yes, Hartmann did down 350 + VVS a/c, the far majority being fighters.
so what? you can't define the performance of the AF as such only from the standpoint of of the leading aces performance- in that way LW has clearly outperformed not only the VVS , but the RAF and USAF as well.
Sorry for my English - after all, it's not even my second foreign language
)
