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Aviation of Word War II |
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Pe-3Heavy FighterPetlyakov![]()
Soviet Air Force employed limited quantity of the Pe-3 only then. What's the matter? Perhaps, there were two main reasons. Firstly, the style of air war at Eastern front allowed to manage without quantities of twin-engined fighters. The second, production and improvement of the aircraft were quite difficult and expensive. Furthermore, there weren't engines for multirole fighter. The ASh-82FN was only engine enabled twin-engined fighter to have required performance. Fitted with the M-105 or VK-105PF engines planes would have shown sufficient data by beginning of WWII, but it hadn't been well in 1943-45. The fighters would loose in flight performance. The VK-107 engine wasn't brought to required condition. The AM-35 and the AM-37 engines production was halted to provide the AM-38 quantities for massbuilt M'yshin II-2 attackers. Although both fine front bombers and advanced twin-engined fighters had been created by the war, in a final bid, some Petlyakov Pe-2 dive bombers were rebuilt into the Pe-3 fighters to provide Moskow region air defence in 1941. But this wasn't full twin-engined fighter. It's interesting the Pe-2 dive bomber had some shortcomings because of its origin from VI-100 high altitude twin-engined fighter and the Pe-3 had defects descended from «bombardment» past of the Pe-2. In total about 360 heavy fighters Pe-3 were built. ![]() |
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