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By: - 6th April 2005 at 22:45 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
did the Yak really participate in Afghanistan? I like to see some real pics of it as the land camouflage looks nice on it.
By: - 7th April 2005 at 00:55 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Everything I've seen has said the Forger was mediocre at best.
By: - 7th April 2005 at 01:09 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
F-18 to answer your question, they actually did participate in Afghanistan in air-to-ground strikes. I don't think they were nearly as heavily involved as most land-based Soviet jets, but they did see some action though I can't say what types of muntions were used. I'd guess UB-32 rocket pods and probably 250-kg bombs. I doubt the AS-7 (Kh-23) was used, although the Forger could carry the missile.
By: - 7th April 2005 at 10:40 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
From what I understand,The Forger was underpowered in the hot and high conditions of Afghanistan,and as a result could carry only a small payload,therefore the Su-25 proved better in the CAS/Strike roles.
By: - 7th April 2005 at 10:58 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Good thread Blackcat:)
The McDonnell Douglas / British Aerospace / Northrop Grumman teams JSF proposal was closer to the Yak-38 and Yak-141 than the F-35 design.
It had a seperate lift engine like the Yaks and a straight through jet pipe that closed off for STOVL ops with the exhaust diverted to 2 side nozzles under the butterfly tail planes.
Take a look here http://www.jsf.mil/gallery/gal_photo_cddr_mda-ngc-bae.htm
By: - 7th April 2005 at 12:03 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
The Harrier was in service before 1975, Blackcat. They were in service in 1969.
And I thought that BAE worked with Lockheed Martin on the F-35 bid, not with McDonnell Douglas, (which is now owned by Boeing I think).
What happened to the Yak 41 project, was it just scrapped at the end of the cold war?
By: - 7th April 2005 at 13:03 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Good thread Blackcat:)The McDonnell Douglas / British Aerospace / Northrop Grumman teams JSF proposal was closer to the Yak-38 and Yak-141 than the F-35 design.
It had a seperate lift engine like the Yaks and a straight through jet pipe that closed off for STOVL ops with the exhaust diverted to 2 side nozzles under the butterfly tail planes.
Take a look here http://www.jsf.mil/gallery/gal_photo_cddr_mda-ngc-bae.htm
You are confusing the layouts of the Yak-38 and Yak-141.....
The Yak-38 had two swivelling nozzles on the lift/cruise engine - the Yak-141 has a single straight-through nozzle with translating cowl - exactly the same as the F-35!!
The only basic difference is that the Yak-141 has two lift engines behind the cockpit whereas the F-35 has a lift fan in the same position.
The rest of the model pics are at :- http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/models_pages/modl_yak-141_ani.html
If you compare the 'advanced' Yak-141M and the F-35 - you will see that the layouts are almost identical - including trapezoidal wings.
There are rumours that Rolls Royce got their lobster-back translating cowl (on the F-35) from the Russians.
Ken
By: - 7th April 2005 at 15:21 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Damd good thread, with good pics, the info is a little off though.
From all accounts I've read, the Forger was rather sluggish and turned like a cow, it's turn radius was similar to the F-4's. The harrier held more advantages over it though and the main one was used in the Falklands to good effect, the abillity to hover in flight and fly backwards.
I read one pilots account from the FAA who stated "I had a Harrier lined up in my sites and just as I squeezed my trigger, he stopped in mid-air, shot up and jumped in behind me and fired on me. The Harriers ability to rotate it's nozzels beyond 90* is IMHO what has made it one of the best planes ever made. The Yak 38, Yak 141 and the F-35 can't do this, nor would they be able to fly backwards as they must provide suffiicient air flow in to the lift jets.
Having said that, the Yak's did have some of their own capabilities that the Harrier didn't. The Yak 38 had an incredible self landing system and the Yak 141 was the first VSTOL plan to go supersonic, something the Westerners really hadn't been able to do. After the Cold War, it was no suprise to me that the American's targeted this plane and it's technology to form part of it's new design to replace the Harrier!
By: - 7th April 2005 at 15:40 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
And I thought that BAE worked with Lockheed Martin on the F-35 bid, not with McDonnell Douglas, (which is now owned by Boeing I think).
BAE joined up with Lockheed Martin on the F-35 bid after the McDonnell Douglas / British Aerospace / Northrop Grumman team was eliminated from the JSF competition.
By: - 7th April 2005 at 15:51 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
You are confusing the layouts of the Yak-38 and Yak-141.....The Yak-38 had two swivelling nozzles on the lift/cruise engine - the Yak-141 has a single straight-through nozzle with translating cowl - exactly the same as the F-35!!
The only basic difference is that the Yak-141 has two lift engines behind the cockpit whereas the F-35 has a lift fan in the same position.
No I wasn't:), your right about the 3-bearing swivel nozzle being used on both the Yak-141 and X/F-35 of course, but its a big difference between lift jets and shaft driven lift fans, IMO.
Another thing the JSF will have in common with the Yaks is that a auto-eject system has been introduced to counter the lift-fan failure condition for the F-35B STOVL aircraft.
See here http://www.martin-baker.co.uk/eject_mk16E.htm
By: - 7th April 2005 at 17:28 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
My memory was out - the 'developed' Yak-141 was the Yak-43.
It was only a proposed upgrade of the Yak-141, but it looked remarkably like the X-35.......
As for the lift jets vs fans - I was trying to point out that the 'layout' was the same - a vectoring lift/cruise engine with the same nozzle arrangement at the rear, balanced by lift 'engines' at the front end.
The only difference is the way it is provided - 2 jets or a large fan.
Both schemes result in having a heavy weight to be lugged around when not in use - which is where the Harrier scores - although the Pegasus has to be matched for lift rather than cruise.
As for Ja's contention that it was "the first VSTOL plan to go supersonic, something the Westerners really hadn't been able to do" - I think you may get some argument from the French - with the Balzac & the Mirage IIIV.
I think the German VJ-101 also went supersonic - and the P-1154 was designed to do so.
Ken
By: - 7th April 2005 at 18:11 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Ja, where are you getting the info that the Yak-38 was sluggish? I've never heard that, although to be honest I've heard very little about the flight characteristics of the Forger in the first place.
By: - 7th April 2005 at 20:53 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Everything about the Yak-38 was mediocore. It's avionics, it had a very poor payload, something like 4 hardpoints, and a combat radius of only 100km. It would've not given Soviet Carriers at that time any decent Air Defense cover. The harrier was much better in many ways.
By: - 8th April 2005 at 00:39 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
The Yak-38 was an interim fighter - meant to gain experience in V/STOL operations. An excellent book that covers the Yak-38, Yak-38M Forger and Yak-141 is John Fricker & Piotr Butowski's "Yakovlevs VTOL fighters".
Some tidbits from the book
1. The Yak-38M had an automatic ejection system - if during a hover, sink rate, roll and pitch limitations were exceeded the ejection seat fired automatically. Resulting in a very surprised pilot no doubt! :)
2. The weight of the 2 lift engines and the single engine was calculated to be lighter than a purpose built Pegasus like (Harrier) engine - it was more efficient to have those than the swiveling nozzles!
3. The stability augmentation system of the Yak was great, it could do a fully automatic vertical landing. But it was also complex, so a STOL (running) takeoff/landing wasnt perfected till very late in the service life of the Yak. So every takeoff/landing HAD to be vertical. The Harrier gained a lot of its load capability by doing running takeoff, I believe every 500 ft it rolled it could carry 50% extra load or something like that.
4. It was actually used in combat missions in Afghanistan in 1979 but only for a few months. Its performance was so marginal that it could do only dusk/dawn takeoffs! It also resulted in huge plumes of sand being thrown about that caused other airplane operations to cease!
ASP
By: - 8th April 2005 at 07:21 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
PII: Mate I've read many books over the years that state this fact, including one which had an account from an RN pilot who raced a Yak pilot once up around Norway I think it was.
I have a book here called "Soviet Weapons of War" and it too states that it Forger was not as good as the harreir in the speed department.
By: - 8th April 2005 at 17:32 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
I believe the Yak was about as fast as the original Harrier GR.3 and similar models, but the lighter Sea Harrier is obviously much faster.
As far as the Yak's intended roles I'm glad that you mentioned it was intended to intercept MPA's and the like because I had read that somewhere, but I never could confirm if it was true or not. What would a typical air defense load have consisted of Garry? I know the Yak could carry 23-mm gun pods, Aphids, and fuel tanks, but how would it have been configured with only four hardpoints?
By: - 12th April 2005 at 16:32 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
The Harrier was in service before 1975, Blackcat. They were in service in 1969.
yup ur correct there, i shud have mentioed the NAVAL V/STOL, i guess, the Sea Harrier came in only in the start of the 80s and they did not had to wait long to get crowned. So in that sense the Yak-38 was the operational naval V/STOL a/c.
Ken,
As usual, u come in with some damn good stuffs & links and this time is no exception. Hats off to U.
SteveO
Tks for that compli :) ... also to Ja ...
... more later......
Posts: 1,180
By: Blackcat - 6th April 2005 at 22:16
Yak-38
Yakovlev's Yak-38, whose production began in 1975 was probably the first(?) operational V/STOL a/c in the world and the longest operational Russian V/STOL a/c which also was unique in the world. And I think, the net has got not much good info on these machines and their performance with the Russian Navy. But unlike the more media published and known a/c - Harriers, these Russian jets lifted itself with the aid of a main turbojet engine and two smaller lift engines mounted behind the cockpit. And probably, the Yak-141 was an extention and expansion to the experience from these machines, and with that family relations Yak-38 was probably the Grand-daddy of the F-35 which was 'inspired' by the Yak-141 which all happened during the Vadoka Unkils grand auctioning of Russia. In other words it was 'festive offer' from Russia, for many.
Yak-38 had one turbojet engine (R-27V-300) and two lift engines (Rybinsk RD-36-35FVR) which lifted these machines. The Yak-38s engine was more powerful than the Harriers.
Yak-38 spec
Dimensions
Length - 16.37 m
Height - 4.25
Ppan - 7.02 m
Folded - 4.45 m
Wing area - 18.41 m2
Weight
Empty equipped - 7020 kg
Normal takeoff - 10300 kg
Internal fuel - 2750 kg
Engine
Main engine - 1 x R -27V-300 Turbojet
Thrust - 1 X 6100 kg
Lift Engines - 2 x RD -36-35FVR turbojet
Thrust - 2 X 3050 kg
Performance
speed at height - 1100 km/h
speed at sea level - 1210 km/h
Max rate of climb - 4500 m/min
service ceiling - 11000 m max
Operational overloading - 6g
Service range,
Normal - 680 km
with vertical takeoff - 500 km
Combat radius - 250 -370 km
Combat load - 1500 kg
Yak-38 layout diagram
Yak-38, armament layout diagram
Main engine & lift engine layout diagram
Here some very beautiful livery on the Yak-38s, It never ever earlier crossed my mind that these a/c were also a beauty, as is the case with almost all Russian a/c.
Second experimental model Yak-36M
Yak-38
Yak-38, 1975
Yak-38, 1976
Yak-38 that participating in the operation "rhomb", Afghanistan,1980
Yak-38
Yak-38, 1983
more can be read here in Russian
And one good pic of the Yak-38 lifting (?)vertically. Hope u guys can see the two 'pillars' created by the exhaust from the main engine and the lift fans mounted behind the cockpit.
Also, need more info on this Russian V/STOL aircraft and I've some questions -
- How was its performance with the Russian Navy?
- How many were build and how many still active/reserve?
- Why did the Russians withdraw all the Yak-38s from Ukraine from her Black Sea Fleet even though they let go off some carriers to Ukraine for FREE??