Although initially equipped with very poor aircraft - the efects of Stalin's purges and the Luftwaffe, Soviet fighter pilots soon turned the tables through the use of both lend-lease aircraft like the Hurricane, Spitfire, P-39 and P-40, and home grown machines like the MiG-3, LaGG-3/5, Lavochkin La-5/7/9 and the Yak-1/3. Indeed the later Yaks and Lavochkins were easily superior to both the Bf 109 and Fw 190 at low level - the favoured 'killing field' of pilots like Ivan Khozedub and Alexander Pokryshkin, both of whom finished with higher scores than the leading pilots in the West.

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