Oliver’s Yak Planes

Oliver and his dad have been busy building Yak aircraft models, and Oliver has also written some fascinating facts about the planes to share with us.

In 1947, the Yakovel Design Bureau’s Yak-17 first flew. The Yak-17 was far from a perfect aircraft, however, it supplied the Soviet Air Forces with a much needed jet fighter when other nations were flying high-speed interceptors.

The Yak-17 was, simply an older Yak-15 with a few upgrades, and the Yak-15 was a Yak-9 with a jet engine instead of a propellor engine and a shorterwingspan, so you can see how it wouldn’t be the best jet-fighter,as the airframe wasn’t designed to go at that high-speeds, and the weight of the jet engine would stop it from turning well.Production began in 1948 and ended in 1949, the total production of all Yak-15and Yak-17 variants was 717 aircraft, and it retired in early 1960s.

Yak-17’s NATO reporting name is: Feather .Yak-17UTI’s (trainer variant) NATO reporting name is: Magnet.