The La-176 illustrated the rapid pace of jet fighter development during the late 1940s. The aircraft featured highly swept wing and tail surfaces mated to a relatively clean fuselage. The fuselage housed a single turbojet engine fed by a large nose intake similar to that of the F-86 Sabre, MiG-15 and many other early jets. It became the first Soviet (World??) fighter to demonstrate sustained horizontal supersonic flight (after shallow dive acceleration). This happened December 26, 1948 with pilot I.E.Fedorov on controls. Later speed M=1.02 was demonstrated by O.V.Sokolovskij in shallow dive.