The Stalin prize, highest in the U.S.S.R., was awarded today to Simon Lavochkin, Jewish engineer credited with constructing the “IAV 1-7” plane which is considered here as rivalling the best American aircraft.
Lavochkin was born in 1900 in Smolensk. He graduated from a Moscow engineering institute and before the war specialized on building wooden planes designed to save metal. His “LAV 1-7” has undergone radical changes since the outbreak of the war with Lavochkin constantly perfecting it as result of experiences which Soviet fliers shared with him.
“Thousands of Lavochkin’s planes are now carrying death into the enemy’s camp,” a government spokesman said today. In addition to the Stalin prize, Lavochkin was twice decorated with the Order of Lenin and given the title Hero of Scoialist Labor.
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