Performance Comparison: Yakovlev Fighter Family

I am surprised the Yak-3 turn rate wasn't better than that of the other Yaks ...
It seems it was nothing more than a lightened and cleaned up Yak resulting in higher speed and better climb rate. A bit like the La-7.

Kris

Civettone said:

I am surprised the Yak-3 turn rate wasn't better than that of the other Yaks ...
It seems it was nothing more than a lightened and cleaned up Yak resulting in higher speed and better climb rate. A bit like the La-7.

Kris

Click to expand...

Hello Kris

I don't undersant why do you say that. The Yak-3 (17-19s) was a better turner than a Yak 7 or 9. Those being the heavy line of Yak family fighters.

But serial 1943's Yak-1 was weghtning from 2795 to 2885 kg that means 163 to 168 kg/m² WL. Some lightening ones had even less than 157 kg/m² wing load.

Serial Yak-3 had a WL of about 182 kg/m. (178 at best).

So the best "modern" soviet turners were the small batches of specially lightened Yak-1 (16-17s).

Regards

I am simply looking at the graph. I would think the advantage here would be clear but it seems the sustained turn rate is very close to that of the yak-1b of 1942 and that of the Yak-9. The Yak-3 is always portrayed as the ultimate Russian dogfighter.

But perhaps it's the combination of instant turn rate, acceleration, roll rate and most of all speed which made it superior in dogfights. So thatmay be what you are referring to when mentioning the wing load?

But looking again, I see that the Yak-3 was the best below 1000 m which is also very important.
Kris