Lavochkin LaGG-3 drawings and evolution Drawings of Voronin, corrected by Pavel Sadovnikov |
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Note: this text is provisional and based on many mails from Alex Ruchkowsky; the same researcher will produce an improved text as soon as possible.
A widely known classification of LaGG-3 variants takes its origin in the notes on the drawings of Voronin, and accepted by a great number of authors and books; although this classification is widely known and useful, it is a bit outdated at the light of more recent knowledges.
Production started at 4 factories:
Before the war started, Z.21in Gorky turned out about 300 planes; Z.23 in Leningrad and Z.31 in Taganrog turned out about 100 planes together.
Soon after the war outbreak 3 factories wer evacuated:
Each factory led its own sequence of series (and not necessarily from number 1).
What is a series? It is a production batch. For fighters, it was normally 100 pieces in one series (for bombers it was 10). Series of same number at different factories did not match in all the specific details of the planes.
In the basic LaGG history, the main line is the sequence of the
Gorky factory, Z. 21, which was the leading site. Other factories (in Leningrad,
later Novosibirsk, and in Taganrog, later Tbilisi) were sort of subordinated
(they received all updates from Z.21 a bit later and gradually incorporated
them).
Production started at different moments, so when Series 1 went on in Z. 21 nothing
had yet started in Taganrog and Novosibirsk. Also, some sites were slower and
some were faster, so Z. 21 was somewhere in series 37 when Z. 31 was somewhere
in series 27 or 28.
Then Z.21 switched over to La-5, (I did not come across a series number bigger than 312137XX), after which the LaGG fuselages were used to build early La-5 (using the plywood fairings to harmonize transition from engine to fuselage). So series 40 and later. never existed in Gorky.
Z.31 became the only site for LaGG-3; when launching an improved and lightened LaGG-3 (commonly known as "series 66"), they suddenly "jumped over" from Series 27 or 28 to Series 60 in their numbers; series 30/40/50 never existed at Z. 31. Improved LaGGs had serial numbers in range between 60XX and 72XX until LaGG was written off and Z. 31 started building the Yak-3
Numbers of series were held independently at different factories
but the way the planes looked did not necessarily match. In other words,
Series 3 of Z 31 does not necessarily look like Series 3 at Z 21. They could
have a few differences. And Series 27 and 28 of Z 31 were not
similar to the corresponding 27-28 series of z21, they looked more like series
35 of Z. 21.
So those series and numbers are a bit tricky, nothing more than a production counter.
The most interesting thing about the group of planes with big
numerals, such as white 14, 15, 20, 22, 25, 35, 42, 44, are with high probability
built at Zavod 23 in Leningrad in Summer 1941, before the factory was evacuated
to Novosibirsk. 44 iap
records in summer-autumn 1941 show a lot of peculiarly formatted serial numbers
(01100XX) that do not match either Z. 21 or Z. 31 and must belong to Z. 23.
All the mentioned planes have a black-green camo as required at that moment,
but not matching the standard pattern applied on Z. 21/31, and without the fuselage
star. The standard for those Zavod 23 series is 4 guns (2 ShKAS and 2 UB), with
the stbd UB gun deleted. This corresponds nicely to the fact that at the same
time Gorky was building series 4/5/6/7 that did not have the stbd UB either
but did have the horn compensators.
Zavod 31 planes were characterized by the small starlet on the fin and relatively big black serial number underneath it on the fin.
Some Z. 31 series had a strange aerial mast with a diagonal rod
behind it.
There is no info on Z 153 in Novosibirsk at all , I only have
1 or 2 serials and also a suspicion that the well known Japanese LaGG could
have been a Z 153 product.
http://scalemodels.ru/modules/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1505&postdays=0&postorder=asc&&start=180
here is some discussion, in Russian, on the evolution of these drawings.