Alexander Pokryshkin - Aircraft Flown By Pokryshkin

Aircraft Flown By Pokryshkin

Pokryshkin started the war flying the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-3 fighter, in which he scored almost twenty victories. The unit was given the honor "16th Guards Fighter Regiment" in March 1942. At this time, or soon after this, the unit received some Yak-1s, in which Pokryshkin also scored victories. In January 1943 his regiment converted to lend-lease Bell P-39 Airacobras, which despite a persistent myth the Soviets never used in the ground attack role. Soviet pilots liked this aircraft, and found it quite competitive with the Messerschmitt Bf-109 and superior to the Focke-Wulf FW-190 at the low air combat altitudes common on the Eastern Front. Pokryshkin really enjoyed the 37mm cannon's destructive firepower, and the 2 upper nose-mounted .50 caliber machine guns, synchronized to fire through the propellor (airscrew), in addition to the pair of .30 caliber machine guns mounted in each wing, outside the propellor arc and therefore unsynchronized. He claimed that the cannon's trigger, positioned at the top of the joystick, was impossible to push without moving the pilot's hand, which made the aircraft deviate from the gunsight, so finally he had his regiment's aircraft rigged so that a single button simultaneously fired cannon and machine guns. In his memoirs he describes many enemy aircraft immediately disintegrating upon being hit by the salvo. Pokryshkin and his regiment were repeatedly asked to convert to new Soviet fighters such as the La-5 and Yak-3. However Pokryshkin found La-5's firepower insufficient and personally disliked Yakovlev so he never did.

Finally, in 1944, he found an aircraft that he was willing to convert to: the Lavochkin La-7. Unfortunately one of his close friends, Soviet 50-kill (31 personal and 19 group) ace Alexander Klubov was killed in a landing mishap while converting to the La-7. The crash was blamed on the malfunction of the plane's hydraulic system. Pokryshkin subsequently cancelled his regiment's conversion, and there are multiple reports that they instead began flying Bell P-63 Kingcobras. By the lend-lease agreement with United States, the Soviet Union was not allowed to use P-63s against Germany; they were given only to be used in the eventual battle with Japan. Thus it is quite understandable that no mention of this appears in any official records. However, personal accounts of German pilots and flak crewmen who encountered P-63s in the skies of Eastern Prussia as well as the memoirs of one of the pilots in Pokryshkin's squadron appear to confirm that fact. It is reported that 9th IAD was given some 36 P-63s but these were not used while the fighting was still in progress.

MiG-3 aircraft were "white 5", "white 67", "4", and "7" and also "01" (perhaps not in this order). The likliest order is "7", "4", "01" (winter 1941-February 1942), "white 5" (shows "GVARDIYA" on the intakes — likely dates to when the unit was awarded this designation), and finally "67". He then flew Yak-1 fighters when the unit partially re-equipped with them. He flew a P-39K-1 "White 13" 42-4421 over the Kuban, converted in late June to P-39N-0 42-9004 "white 100", and on May 28, 1943, flew "white 17", 41-38520 for a single mission, and in the famous photo taken using the Autobahn as a runway, flew P-39Q-15 "white 50", Serial Number painted out(originally assigned to K.V. Sukhov). He was given 5 La-7 aircraft with the inscription, "From the Workers of Novosibirsk to Hero of the Soviet Union Alexandr Ivanovich Pokhryshkin", but did not fly in them himself. An La-7-equipped unit was, in 1945, made a part of the 9th Guards Division, making it a FOUR-Regiment Division. At one point in 1944 he apparently was given an La-5FN for his personal use pending the hoped-for Lavochkin conversion of the entire unit.

The unit apparently flew P-63A or C Kingcobras post war, and Pokryshkin would have again numbered his aircraft "100". Finally, one or more of the 9th Guards Fighter Division units MAY have eventually converted to the Yak-9P before his attendance at the War College in 1948.