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Lavochkin La-152 (Series)

1946 COLD WAR X-PLANE

History

In February 1945, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin ordered the Aerospace Corporation to focus on the design and development of a single-seat jet fighter centered on the German Junkers Jumo 004B turbojet engine. This led to various proposals, and Lavochkin brought two parallel designs - the La-150 and La-152. Despite trying to meet the same requirements, each design is completely unique and created from its own vision. The La-152 is believed to be the first Soviet jet fighter to feature an afterburner function in its engine, although that didn't happen until an improved prototype became available.

The German engine became the RD-10 in Soviet nomenclature.

The La-150 adopted the "pod and boom" configuration that was popular in many early Soviet jet fighters of the time. A nose-mounted air intake sucked in the single-engine unit, and the wing main aircraft was shoulder-mounted along the fuselage.

A traditional single-wing tail was used and a retractable tricycle landing gear was installed. The pilot sits under a largely unobstructed canopy at the front of the plane.

Instead, the La-152 adopted a similar, albeit entirely new, thin-wing plane form, with these appendages mounted in the middle along the lower part of the fuselage. The single jet engine is still sucked in through the nose air intake and exhausted under the fuselage, and the single tail arrangement is still in play. The aircraft retained a retractable three-point landing gear with wheels.

The cockpit is now amidships, there is more glass in the canopy, and the position of the cockpit is limited by the front-mounted engine. The relocation of the engine to the nose was to avoid the "loss of passage" that occurred due to the La-150's rear-engine layout. To maintain the correct center of gravity (CoG), the La-152's cockpit was forced to move backwards.

As a fighter development, the new aircraft carried a cannon-only weapon, including 3 x 23mm Nudelman-Suranov NS-23 series cannons, all mounted on the nose.

The La-152 first flew on December 5, 1946. The design reached a top speed of 520 mph in the air, but eventually crashed on its eighth attempt to land.

A total of four aircraft were produced for the program, the La-152, La-154, La-156, and La-174TK, which were largely identical in design except for minor engine differences. The Lyulka TR-1 engine (2,800 lb thrust) designed for the La-154 was never installed and the prototype was never completed, while the La-156 was upgraded from an RD-10 to an RD-10F engine with afterburner capability. The La-156 first flew in September 1947, and the model had a top speed of 562 mph. The prototype also added extended wings, ejection seats, a new canopy design and cockpit armor, symbolizing a more realistic fighter jet. The top speed reached is 562 miles per hour.

The prototype was tested by the Soviet Air Force, but required too many changes to be accepted for official use in 1948.

La-174TK was primarily an experimental version of La-156 when it was released in 1947. A main aircraft with thinner wings was installed and a British 3,500-pound thrust Rolls-Royce Derwent V turbojet was installed.

The displacement of the engine forced the nose cannon armament to be relocated to the ventral portion of the nose, and the revised design achieved a top speed of 600 mph.

Like the rest of the series, the La-174 dropped to zero, as all further work on the program was halted by the addition of a swept jet fighter under study (and promised performance upgrades). Both the performance and technical limitations of straight-wing jets could largely overcome the swept airfoil, a work that led to classic designs of the period, such as the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 and the North American F- 86 Saber (1950 -1953) rose to fame.

The La-152 was designated a "Type 4" by the US Air Force. The aircraft family influenced the upcoming La-160 program, which further developed the product line - a form that became the "Type 6" in USAF nomenclature.