Funny, I have a memory of my parents watching "Piece of Cake". One of the planes was struck, the fuel leaked and the whole cabin caught on fire.

The Yak-3 was hailed by Soviet textbooks as the best fighter plane of the war. Not quite. It was light and fairly manouverable, but that was because of wartime economies with material!!! They also couldn't arm it as heavily as they would've liked to. Not a bad plane, easy to fly, but yet again, propoganda made it into something it wasn't.