The Yakovlev Yak-17 (;

USAF The United States Air Force (USAF) is the Air force, air service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is one of the six United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Tracing its ori ...

/ DOD designation Type 16,

NATO reporting name NATO uses a system of code names, called reporting names, to denote military aircraft and other equipment used by post-Soviet states, former Warsaw Pact countries, China, and other countries. The system assists military communications by providi ...

Feather) is an early

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

jet fighter. It was developed from the Yak-15, the primary difference being

tricycle landing gear Tricycle gear is a type of aircraft undercarriage, or ''landing gear'', that is arranged in a tricycle fashion. The tricycle arrangement has one or more nose wheels in a single front undercarriage and two or more main wheels slightly aft of th ...

. The trainer version, known as the Yak-17UTI (NATO reporting name Magnet), was the only Soviet jet trainer of the 1940s. Both aircraft were exported in small numbers and the Yak-17 was soon replaced by the far superior

Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 (; USAF/DoD designation: Type 14; NATO reporting name: Fagot) is a jet fighter aircraft developed by Mikoyan-Gurevich for the Soviet Union. The MiG-15 was one of the first successful jet fighters to incorporate s ...

beginning in 1950.

Design and development

After the state acceptance trials of the Yak-15 in May 1947 recommended that the aircraft be modified with a tricycle landing gear more suitable for jet-powered aircraft, the

Yakovlev The Joint-stock company, JSC A.S. Yakovlev Design Bureau () is a Russian aircraft designer and manufacturer (design office prefix Yak). Its head office is in Aeroport District, Northern Administrative Okrug, Moscow. It is a subsidiary of Yakovle ...

design bureau began design of the Yak-15U or Yak-15U-RD-10 (''uloochshenny'' - improved). The main gear had to be redesigned to place the wheels behind the aircraft's center of gravity. The main gear was moved behind the front spar, and when retracted filled most of the space between the spars. This caused a major redesign of the fuel tanks and reduced their capacity to just 680 liters (150 gallons). This necessitated the addition of two

drop tank In aviation, a drop tank (external tank, wing tank or belly tank) is used to describe auxiliary fuel tanks externally carried by aircraft. A drop tank is expendable and often capable of being jettisoned. External tanks are commonplace on modern ...

s, which hung under the tip of each wing. The addition of the tip tanks required a redesign of the structure of the wing so that the aircraft could still maintain a load bearing of 12g. The vertical stabilizer was enlarged and a

periscope A periscope is an instrument for observation over, around or through an object, obstacle or condition that prevents direct line-of-sight observation from an observer's current position. In its simplest form, it consists of an outer case with ...

was also added above the windscreen on most series aircraft. Armament, systems, and equipment were virtually unchanged.Gunston 1995 Production began in 1948. Total production of all Yak-15 and Yak-17 variants was 717.

Operational history

The Yak-17 was first publicly displayed at the

Soviet Aviation Day Russian Air Force Day () is a professional military holiday of Russia celebrated on 12 August to honor the active and reserve personnel, as well as veterans of the Russian Aerospace Forces. History Air Fleet Day (), also known as the Air Forces D ...

of 1949, at Tushino Airfield. In operation, the Yak-17 had most of the same faults as its predecessor, including relatively low speed and range, and an unreliable engine (still based upon the German

Junkers Jumo 004 The Junkers Jumo 004 was the world's first production turbojet engine in operational use, and the first successful axial compressor turbojet engine. Some 8,000 units were manufactured by Junkers in Germany late in World War II, powering the Mess ...

) with a complicated starting procedure. On the other hand, its handling was very simple, and similar to popular propeller fighters such as the Yak-3 and Yak-9. This made it an excellent transitional machine to jet fighters. As a result, the trainer version Yak-17UTI accounted for the majority of production, and almost all series-built Yak-17s were of this tandem, dual-control trainer version, which filled an important need in all Soviet air arms. Surviving Yak-17s can be viewed at the

Central Air Force Museum The Central Air Force Museum () is an aviation museum in Monino, Moscow Oblast, Russia. A branch of the Central Armed Forces Museum, it is one of the world's largest aviation museums, and the largest for Soviet aircraft, with a collection includi ...

at Monino, outside of Moscow and the Prague Aviation Museum at Kbely Airport, near

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. Surviving Yak-17UTIs include one example at the

Polish Aviation Museum The Polish Aviation Museum () is a large museum of historic aircraft and aircraft engines in Kraków, Poland. It is located at the site of the no-longer functional Kraków-Rakowice-Czyżyny Airport. This airfield, established by Austr ...

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and the Chinese Aviation Museum, near

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Variants

*Yak-15U (Yak-15U-RD-10): Improved Yak-15 with tricycle undercarriage and drop tanks, became the prototype of the Yak-17 proper. *UTI Yak-17-RD10 (Yak-21T): (No relation to the earlier Yak-17-RD10) Two-seat trainer version of the Yak-15U with long greenhouse canopy over tandem cockpits and tricycle undercarriage. *Yak-21T: (''T'' for ''Tryokhkolyosnoye shassee'' - "tricycle undercarriage") Alternative designation of the UTI Yak-17-RD10. Unrelated to the earlier Yak-21. *Yak-17: Production fighters with tricycle undercarriage. *Yak-17UTI: The most-produced variant of the Yak-17, the Yak-17UTI was a tandem-seat, dual-control trainer. Fuel capacity was greatly reduced, owing to the elimination of the wingtip tanks. Initially it was planned to include a single UBS machine gun, but this was omitted on series-produced aircraft. In the U.S., this aircraft was known as the "Type 26", and given the ASCC reporting name "Magnet".

Operators

* Bulgarian Air Force operated a small number of Yak-17UTI between 1951-1954. *

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(PLAAF) received one Yak-17UTI for training

MiG-9 The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-9 (, USAF/DoD reporting names, USAF/DoD designation: Type 1, NATO reporting name: Fargo) was the first turbojet fighter aircraft, fighter developed by Mikoyan, Mikoyan-Gurevich in the years immediately after World War I ...

pilots. Imported 43 Yak-17 in 1950-1951. Later they were used when converting the former La-9 and La-11 pilots to fly MiG-15. *

Czechoslovak Air Force The Czechoslovak Air Force (''Československé letectvo'') or the Czechoslovak Army Air Force (''Československé vojenské letectvo'') was the air force branch of the Czechoslovak Army formed in October 1918. The armed forces of Czechoslovakia c ...

tested one Yak-17. *

Polish Air Force The Polish Air Force () is the aerial warfare Military branch, branch of the Polish Armed Forces. Until July 2004 it was officially known as ''Wojska Lotnicze i Obrony Powietrznej'' (). In 2014 it consisted of roughly 26,000 military personnel an ...

operated three Yak-17 (transcribed as ''Jak-17'') and 11 Yak-17UTI (known as ''Jak-17UTI'' or ''Jak-17W'') between 1950 and 1955. *'' Instytut Lotnictwa'' received one Yak-17 from Polish Air Force and used it with civilian markings SP-GLM for tests between 1957 and 1960. *

Romanian Air Force The Romanian Air Force (RoAF) () is the air force branch of the Romanian Armed Forces. It has an air force headquarters, an operational command, five air bases, a logistics base, an air defense brigade, an air defense regiment and an ISR (Intel ...

operated nine Yak-17UTIs as trainers for the Yak-23s from 1951 until 1958. *

Soviet Air Force The Soviet Air Forces (, VVS SSSR; literally "Military Air Forces of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics"; initialism VVS, sometimes referred to as the "Red Air Force") were one of the air forces of the Soviet Union. The other was the Sovie ...

operated Yak-17 aircraft from 1948 into the early 1950s.

Specifications (Yak-17)

Citations

Bibliography

* Gordon, Yefim & Kommissarov, Dmitry. ''Early Soviet Jet Fighters''. Manchester, UK: Hikoki Publications, 2014. . * Green, William & Swanborough, Gordon. "The Complete Book of Fighters". London: Salamander Books. 1994. . * Gunston, Bill. ''The Osprey Encyclopedia of Russian Aircraft 1875–1995''. London: Osprey, 1995. . * Mikolajczuk, Marian. ''Yakovlev Yak-23: The First Yakovlev Jet Fighters''. Sandomirez, Poland: Stratus, 2008. .

External links

Description page on aviation.ru
{{USAF/DoD reporting names 1940s Soviet fighter aircraft Yak-017 Single-engined jet aircraft Aircraft first flown in 1947