I'm sorry, but you're wrong. A number of authors have looked into it and Soviet claims were mostly ficticious. I'm not saynig they didn't get kills (so many of them, some quite skilled aces!) but the official reports on anything Soviet-era are almost certainly propoganda fabrications. This stretches from before their involvement in the war to well into the cold war era. It's a constant thread and as much as there is inherrent inaccuracy amongst all nations, the Soviets create and foster an entire system that perpetuates several times the exaggeration that any other nation has ever had.
They had political officers waiting for the planes to land and they would jump out and literally badger pilots to report kills instantly before they've had time to step off the plane. Fear, intimidation, the need for kill claims no matter what the truth -- it led to an entire system of corrup kill claiming. This is in general, mind you. I'm not singling out any particular ace, and no doubt many did not do this if they were already capable of getting the kills on their own.
On the other hand, you then have other pilots that made up tallies to save their skin from secret police taking them away in the night.
Actually, from my reading, almost the opposite is true. They needed physical proof of their kills as most were over their own front lines. I believe they received a "stipend" for kills as well.
I've read of pilots going to the front lines to find wreckage of their kills.
I suppose it depends on who the claims are coming from, the pilots or the political officers.
The only info on 3 cannon Yak9's I've ever seen was regarding, I beleive, the Yak9P and it was that it did
not see service in WWII. I always assumed the UT was just an experiment in "universal" armament as all other attemts to mount three cannon in the nose of Yak9's were deemed failures.
wrongway