Originally posted by ATA
There wasn't much of a choise.This is Russia we talking about, there isnt a "prefered" plane,there is a "plane that given to you".
Actually there was alot of pressure from higher up to move away from the P-39 to the la-5,la-7 and other russian built planes. The various "guards" units had choice of material. The top russian aces could fly any plane they wanted....
Here are a couple of excerpts and a link....
Drawing conclusions, it can be said that the debut of the Airacobra in the Soviet VVS was singularly successful. In skilled hands it was a powerful weapon, fully on a par with the enemy equipment. There was no "special" operational environment for the Airacobras-they were employed as normal multi-purpose fighters that fulfilled the same roles as Lavochkins and Yakovlevs: they contested with fighters, escorted bombers, flew on reconnaissance, and protected our ground forces. They differed from Soviet-produced fighters in having a more powerful armament, survivability, and a good radio, and fell behind our fighters in vertical maneuverability, capability to withstand excessive G-forces, and to execute acute maneuvers. The pilots loved their Airacobras for comfort and good protection. As one P-39 pilot expressed it, he felt like he was "flying in a safe". Airacobra pilots did not burn because the aircraft was metal and the fuel cells were positioned far away in the wing. They were not subject to jets of steam or streams of oil because the engine was behind them. Their faces were not beat up on protrusions of the gunsight. If the airplane should happen to flip over on landing, they were not turned into lump of flesh, as happened to twice HSU A. F. Klubov after transitioning from a P-39 to an La-7. There was a kind of mystical belief that a pilot attempting to preserve a damaged Cobra by belly landing it would almost always emerge not only alive, but also undamaged. But if he bailed out of the same airplane he often was seriously injured or killed by the stabilizer, which was on the same level as the door.
The regiment went into combat on 17 March 1943 from Korenovsk airfield, in the Kuban, as part of the 219th Bomber Division, 4th Air Army. The regiment fought in this subordination for the entire extent of the celebrated air campaign over the Kuban. It fought against the best German fighter squadrons: JG 51 (Mulders) and JG 3 (Green Hearts). During the period from 17 March to 20 August 1943, the regiment flew 1,625 combat sorties with a flight time of 2,072 hours. It conducted 111 aerial engagements, in which it shot down 167 and damaged an additional 29 enemy aircraft. Its losses were 30 Airacobras destroyed and 11 damaged.
For combat successes in the Kuban campaign, the 298th IAP was designated the 104th Guards IAP on 24 August 1943. The regiment commander, I. A. Taranenko, received the rank Hero of the Soviet Union and was promoted. Major V. G. Semenishin, who had been awarded HSU on 24 May 1943, was named the regiment commander on 18 July 1943. In August 1943, the newspaper Pravda published a photograph of the four best pilots of the regiment with the inscription, "Fighter pilots who, in the battle for the Kuban, have shot down 60 German aircraft: major V. Semenishin, Captains K. Vishnevetskiy and V. Drygin, Junior Lieutenant A. Vilyamson". V. M. Drygin received the HSU rank on 24 May 1943, Vishnevetskiy at the end of the Kuban campaign on 24 August 1943, and Vilyamson on 27 June 1945.
http://lend-lease.airforce.ru/english/articles/romanenko/p-39/part2.htm
