Originally posted by Pyro
I had the center tank at 110 liters and ther remaining in the wing. 170/148/148 are the correct sizes?
The LaGG3 had a centre tank of 110 litres plus inner (120 Litres ea) and outer (65 Litres ea) wing tanks.
This being the original "5 tank set".
Early La5's had the same set.
Latterly the set was varied. with either the outer wing tanks or the fuselage tank being removed.
Hence there seem to have been examples of La5's, La5F's and early La5FN's with............
5 tanks 480 L
4 tanks 370 L
3 tanks 350 L
In fact the tanks could be fairly easily added or removed in the "field"
With the advent of the metal sparred wing (which permitted more space between the spars for larger inner and fuselage tanks) the tank set was changed to the later 3 tank set.
Late production La5F's and mid to late 43 La5FN's had metal sparred wings as did of course the La7.
It would be nice to think that the 170 and 2 x 148 L tanks were immediately and universally installed but this was not how Russian production was organised. If the old tanks were still available then they were used. Hence from mid to late 43 there may be a variety of capacities based upon which factory the La5FN came out of and which tanks were still unused from stock.
eg.when Gorki was told to stop production of La5FN's in favour of La7's in May/June 44 it had such a stock of La5FN wings that production continued until October!I think we can assume that all La7's had this 3 tank set.