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...
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