Lavochkin-Gorbunov-Goudkov LaGG-3

LaGG-3
Role	Fighter
Manufacturer	21 (Gorky), 31 (Taganrog/Tbilisi), 23/153 (Leningrad/Novosibirsk)
Designer	V. P. Gorbunov
First flight	30 March 1940
Introduction	early 1941
Primary user	Soviet Union
Produced	1941–1944
Number built	6,528
Variants	Lavochkin La-5 Lavochkin La-7

The Lavochkin-Gorbunov-Gudkov LaGG-3 (Лавочкин-Горбунов-Гудков ЛаГГ-3) was a Soviet fighter aircraft of World War II. It was a refinement of the earlier LaGG-1, and was one of the most modern aircraft available to the Soviet Air Force at the time of Germany's invasion in 1941.

Overweight despite its wooden construction, at one stage 12 LaGG-3s were being completed daily and 6,528 had been built when factory 31 in Tbilisi switched to Yak-3 production in 1944.

The prototype of the LaGG-3, I-301, was designed by Semyon A. Lavochkin, Vladimir P. Gorbunov and Mikhail I. Gudkov. It was designated LaGG-3 in serial production. Its airframe was almost completely made of timber, with the so-called delta-lumber (a wood-plastic composite composed of very thin, 0.35 to 0.55 mm, wood veneer and phenol formaldehyde resin, baked at high temperature and pressure) used for the crucial parts. This novel construction material had tensile strength comparable to that of non-hardened aluminum alloys and only 30% lower than that of precipitation hardened D-1A grade duralumin. It was also incombustible and completely invulnerable to rot, with service life measured in decades in adverse conditions. The full wooden wing (with plywood surfaces) was analogous to that of the Yak-1. The only difference was that the LaGG's wings were built in two sections. The fuselage was of similar construction to the MiG-3's. The LaGG-3's armament consisted of a 20 mm ShVAK cannon, with 150 rounds, which was installed in the motornaya pushka format between the "V" of the cylinders of the engine and firing through a hollow propeller shaft, and two synchronized 12.7 mm Berezin UBS machine guns with 170 rpg. Consequently, the weight of fire was 2.65 kg/s, making the LaGG-3 superior in burst mass to all contemporary Russian fighters, particularly to the MiG-3. Most other Russian fighters of that era were considered under-gunned in relation to western contemporary fighters. This is somewhat true even for the Yak-1, which had a 20 mm cannon and two 7.62 mm machine guns, but not the later versions of the Polikarpov I-16, which had two cannons and two machine guns.

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