Hi all,
Small addition to my research… I've found an interview with Popkov!
http://militaryvideo.ru/eng/index.php?ind=news&op=news_show_single&ide=172It's in Russian; I'll try to extract as much info as possible. For now just few most interesting screenshots of pics from his personal archive:
This could be an early one, only one star on shoulder…
With the boys…
Entering "75", I guess his aircraft prior to crash in 1943 (before he got his first HSU)…
This one is extremely rare:
Next to Yak-9 (I think -9U), while for a short period of time 5th GIAP had Yak's in April 1945. But, pilots were not very happy with Yak, so they demanded and got their old La-5's back. I believe that during this "Return of the La", some of the La-7's slipped through.
It is very possible that during this re-transition Popkov had a chance to fly La-7 and to score one (sole?) victory on it.
Also, to support some details regarding 5th GIAP (should I post a fresh thread on that subject?), here are some pics of another fine pilot from 5th GIAP, Georgiy Baevsky (Баевский Георгий Артурович):
Large part of the prop root is painted white…
Here, a smaller portion is painted…
Profile of "68" with lions head! Not sure about authors sources. December 1943…
This Yak sports 19 victories, the total tally for Baevsky, April 1945…
And a pic that now adds(?) to confusion…
Comment says about decoration added toward the end of war, "tiger ripping apart a jackal with Hitler's head".
Well, if you mistranslate above sentence couple of times back-and forth, confuse what was "on the other side", confuse what was on the other side "of what" or "in regard to what", or whose head it was… Then you have "tigers head on one side and HSU on the other" or something similar.
BR