YAK, LAGS, Stormovik

In Moscow, the Army's Red Star jubilantly announced that improved types of YAKs, LAGGs and Stormoviks had been put into action. To Russia's common man this was no run-of-the-mill war item; it was the first solid proof that the aircraft factories transplanted to the rocky Ural soil had grown to maturity.

Behind the new planes loomed the Big Three of Soviet light-plane design: Yakovlev, Iliushin and Lavochkin. Youngish, prolific, publicity-shy, the three designers had blended ideas borrowed from abroad with the Red Army's own unorthodox ideas on blitz warfare. All three have been laden heavily with honors and rubles.

>Alexander Yakovlev cut his teeth on trainers before turning to fighters. His proudest brain child is the YAK, a cannon-armed, partly plywood, 400-mile-an-hour plane, which has consistently outfought the Messerschmitt. Practical Vice Commissar Yakovlev is manager of a huge aircraft plant, a major general.

>Sergei Iliushin, head of a state airplane-design bureau, revels in the reputation of a Man-Who-Gets-Things-Done. Stalin often visits Iliushin's offices, gives unexcited pep talks to the staff. When Hitler went on his rampage, Iliushin began to toy with the idea of a flying tank-buster. The seed of the idea was the memory of a frying pan with which many a Russian flyer armor-plated his plane seat in World War I. Out of the frying pan came the fiery Stormovik, which has destroyed so many Nazi tanks that the Germans renamed it der schwarze Tod (the Black Death). Heavily armored, bristling with cannon, the Stormovik is deadliest at a perilous 80 ft. or lower.

>Semyon Lavochkin is Yakovlev's chief rival in the fighter field. A Jewish teacher's son, he is tough, unsmiling. His new plywood fighter, the Reds say, has a faster takeoff, greater punch, a remarkably easy control. The name-handle, LAGG, is compounded of LA for Lavochkin, GG for his aides, Gorbunov & Gudkov.

Each of the Big Three last year collected the lush 150,000-ruble (about $30,000) Stalin Prize for plane design. On the occasion, the press gave them its most flattering compliment: "Creators of Stalinist Aviation."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.