Yakovlev Aircrafts 1944-45 by Konstantin Udalov

[athpilot]

Hi to all!
I just received another great publication by Konstantin Udalov "A.S. Yakovlev and his airplanes" (Avico Press, Moscow 2018, 80 pages). Konstantin has worked together with the famous aviationartists Jozef Gatial and Marek Rys; which makes this excellent book even more remarkable. So text and illustrations are matching perfectly and many new informations can be found here, not only for historians and aircraft enthusiats, but also for modelers. The author present a profoundly researched and well illustrated book about the Yakovlev design of the 1944-1945 timeframe, including the UT-2l, Yak-5, Yak-10 (Yak-14), Yak-13 and the paper design Yak-10. Udalov starts with the designhistory of the UT-2 , which begann in the early 1930s (1933) and gives detailed historic and technical background. Literally thousands of soviet trainnee pilots learned basic flying skills with the UT-2. The focus here is on the UT-2l, the last trainer version. It was build in the factory no. 115 since summer 1944. Every designstage and most of the designs, prototypes, projects and production aircraft are either covered on historic documents, photo, drawing or 3d illustration. Every chapter ends up with a technical designhistory summary and further references. But not only the planes are describe, even some of their - more or less well-known - designers and testpilots are covered; e.g. Petr M. Stevanovskii and the test pilot Viktor L. Rastogujev. Next is the UT-2 follow-up the Yak-5. This was a truly unknown aircraft to me. The single-seater appears strikingly "modern". Gatial did some very beautiful renderings here; Kudos! Then there is the light multipurpose plane Yak-10 (Yak-14). It is interesting to see, that some influences of the (captured) german Fi-156 "Storch" (stork) went into this design. It and it´s variants were also build in the factory No. 115. Next is the light passenger aircraft Yak-13 (pp. 64-73). It´s interesting to read, how this designs emerge from another and had a shared (design-)history. The last one is the two-engined passenger and multipurpose aircraft Yak-10. This beauty was only a project. In size and task it could be compared to the Beechcraft Model 18 Lockheed Model 10 "Electra" (p. 77); but it was more beautiful (see the attached cover artwork). I highly recommend it!
Cheers, Athpilot

 

[Avimimus]

When I see Avico books I think 'I really ought to learn Russian'

 

[igor-mich]

Just received my copy of the next book of K. G. Udalov – "Yakovlev and his aircraft".
This book is devoted to aircraft and projects created by the Yakovlev Design Bureau in 1944. The war was still going on, but trainer, passenger, multi-purpose airplanes were created in the design bureau, the Soviet Union was preparing for a peaceful life.
As always, the book contains a lot of historical material and previously unpublished documents and photographs.
For the first time, information about the previously unknown project of the Yak-10 passenger aircraft is given.
Now you can get acquainted with the aircraft presented in this edition. Some of them were later prototypes of mass-produced aircraft: this is the UT-2L — the Yak-18 mass production training aircraft that later became mass-produced, while the multi-purpose Yak-10 (Yak-14) was also remake into the Yak-12 aircraft;
I highly recommend everyone to buy this book and enjoy the content and high-quality printing and computer graphics of Josef Gatial and Marek Rys.