Yakovlev Yak-3
| Yak-3 | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Role | Fighter |
| Manufacturer | Yakovlev |
| First flight | 12 April 1941 (I-30) |
| Introduction | 1944 |
| Retired | 1952 |
| Primary users |
Soviet Air Force Free French Normandie-Niemen Air Force of the Polish Army, SFR Yugoslav Air Force |
| Number built | 4,848 |
| Developed from | Yak-1 |
The Yakovlev Yak-3 (Russian: Я́ковлев Як-3) was a World War II Soviet fighter aircraft. Robust and easy to maintain, it was very much liked by pilots and ground crew alike. It was one of the smallest and lightest major combat fighters fielded by any combatant during the war. Its high power-to-weight ratio gave it excellent performance. It proved a formidable dogfighter. Marcel Albert, World War II French ace, who flew the Yak in USSR with the Normandie-Niémen Group, considered it a superior aircraft when compared to the P-51D Mustang and the Supermarine Spitfire. After the war ended, it flew with the Yugoslav and Polish Air Forces.
The origins of the Yak-3 went back to 1941 when the I-30 prototype was offered along with the I-26 (Yak-1) as an alternative design. The I-30, powered by a Klimov M-105P engine, was of all-metal construction, using a wing with dihedral on the outer panels. Like the early Yak-1, it had a 20 mm ShVAK cannon firing through the hollow-driveshaft nose spinner as a motornaya pushka, and twin 7.62 mm synchronized ShKAS machine guns in cowl mounts ahead of the cockpit on the fuselage, but was also fitted with a ShVAK cannon in each wing. The first of two prototypes was fitted with a slatted wing to improve handling and short-field performance while the second prototype had a wooden wing without slats, in order to simplify production. The second prototype crashed during flight tests and was written off. Although there were plans to put the Yak-3 into production, the scarcity of aviation aluminum and the pressure of the Nazi invasion led to work on the first Yak-3 being abandoned in late fall 1941.
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Wikipedia