A coffin that became a killer

Soviet pilots had a cruel name for the LaGG-3: Lakirovanny Garantirovanny Grob, the guaranteed varnished coffin. The polished all-wood fighter, first flown on 28 March 1940, was tough and slow to burn, but its laminated panels shattered under cannon fire and it was outclassed by the Bf 109. Even so 6,528 were built, because the Soviet Union had wood and needed fighters. What saved the bureau was an engine swap carried out unofficially in a hut beside an airfield.

A Smolensk teacher’s son

The man in the hut was Semyon Lavochkin, born in 1900 into a Jewish family in Smolensk, the son of a teacher. He fought in the Civil War, graduated from the Moscow technical university in 1927 and worked under Tupolev at TsAGI. The bureau that became OKB-301 dates from 1937, with Vladimir Gorbunov as its first head and Mikhail Gudkov and Lavochkin beside him, hence the LaGG name. In the winter of 1941–1942 they put the Shvetsov ASh-82 radial into a LaGG-3 airframe.

Kozhedub’s La-7

The result, the La-5, first flew in March 1942 and was built 9,920 times. Its refined successor, the La-7, entered service in June 1944, with 5,753 fighters and 582 trainers built. It was the mount of Ivan Kozhedub, the top Allied ace of the war, who used it to shoot down a Messerschmitt Me 262 jet; his La-7 number 27 is preserved at Monino. Between 1941 and 1945 more than 22,000 Lavochkin fighters were produced.

Second place in the jet age

Peace was less kind. The La-9 and La-11 were the last Soviet piston fighters, and in jets Lavochkin kept finishing second to Mikoyan. The La-160 of 1947 was the first Soviet swept-wing jet, the experimental Aircraft 176 is believed to have been the first Soviet aircraft past Mach 1, in a dive, and the La-15 reached production with 235 built. The bureau turned to missiles, from the S-25 and S-75 air-defence systems to the Burya intercontinental cruise missile. Lavochkin died in 1960 of a heart attack during a missile test in Kazakhstan.

Moon landers and Mars failures

Under Georgy Babakin, chief designer from 1965, the bureau found a new frontier. On 3 February 1966 its Luna 9 made the first soft landing on the Moon and returned pictures from the surface, and in 1970 Lunokhod 1 became the first robotic rover on another world. NPO Lavochkin went on to build almost all Soviet and Russian interplanetary probes and the Fregat upper stage, but its recent record is mixed: Fobos-Grunt was stranded in Earth orbit in 2011, and Luna 25 crashed on the Moon in August 2023.

Fabrieken

• OKB-301 and plant · Khimki, Moscow Oblast
• OKB-21 (wartime) · Gorky (Nizhny Novgorod) — Lavochkin lived and worked here 1940–1944

Mensen

• Semyon Lavochkin · designer, head of the bureau — 1900–1960
• Georgy Babakin · chief designer 1965–1971 — Led the move into lunar and planetary probes
• Ivan Kozhedub · top Allied ace — Flew La-5 and La-7

Records en primeurs

• Luna 9, 3 February 1966: first soft landing on the Moon with images from the surface
• Lunokhod 1, 1970: first robotic rover on the Moon
• Aircraft 176: believed first Soviet aircraft to exceed Mach 1, in a dive