Hier ergänzend noch ein paar Anmerkungen zur englischen Übersetzungen, die ich damals in einem englischsprachigen Forum mit den Mitglieder dort diskutiert habe. Ein wertvoller Hinweis zur Datierung und leistungsmäßigen Einordnung der Maschine kam dort vom User "Youss", der sagte:
"engines marked by M-82FNV (Forsirovany Neposredstvennym Vspryskom) was in production in end-42 - 1st half 1943. from Q3 of 1943 engines marked by "-82FN" only."
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Original:
"Am Boden und im Fluge stört die starke Abgasbelästigung."
My translation:
"On the ground and during flight exhaust fumes are very troublesome."
English book translation (posted above):
"On the ground in during flight strong exhaust fumes are troublesome."
New verbatim (but clumsy) translation:
"On the ground and in flight the strong harrassment by exhaust gases is disturbing."
This is further reinforced by Lerche's book "Testpilot auf Beuteflugzeugen":
"The engine ran 'hard'*, but appeared immaculate**, and the auxiliary devices seemed to be fine, too. After I has - as usual - tried to figure out all of the functions, I took off on 15th of September 1944 and arrived (after one stop enroute at Märkisch-Friedland from 17:12 hours to 18:38) at Rechlich at 19:33 hours. On this evening I was like stunned. It cannot be ruled out that one brethed in some carbon monoxide in this aircraft along with the exhaust fumes. [...]
Less dangerous but not pleasant either was the 'hard' run of the engine of the La-5 that mad almost deafened me on that evening. If I didn't forget it, I always stuffed some wadding into my ears [when flying the La-5]."
* "hart" in the German original. Slang word, applied to engines it means noisy and vibrating, but does not point to any problem like the English term "rough" might do. This is obviously confirmed by the second half of the sentence, "but appeared immaculate" :-)
** "einwandfrei" in the German original. Verbatim, this means "free from objections". My translation "immaculate" is very close to the original meaning, another very close translation would be "flawless". Here is a summary of possible translations:
http://dict.leo.org/ende?lp=ende&lang=de...dfrei&relink=on
So you see that Lerche did not notice anything wrong with the engine, and he actually didn't say anything about smoke. The impression I got from his La-5 description was similar to the impression I got from the description of British pilots flying the Typhoon - noisy, vibrating, fumes in the cockpit were normal for the type. (I don't know if they were normal for the La-5, so it might be worth checking some Russian opinions.)