The
Yak-15 is famous as one of the first Soviet jets to proudly wear the big Red Star.
Less known is its more powerful but far less produced follow-on, the Yak-16.
After helping secure victory in W.W. II, the status of the Red Air Force reached almost mythic proportions in the eyes of the Soviet proletariat as this poster demonstrates.
While the Yak-15 enabled the Red Air Force to enter the Jet Age, the
Council of People's Commissars demanded something better.
Pressed to improve on the Yak-15, the Yakevlov design bureau was limited by an aircraft already at the edge of its engineering envelope. Desperate measures were used to meet the Council of People's Commissars' unrealistic edicts.
Eventually, from the mists of blistering hang-overs that would cripple ordinary men, the idea was formed to re-work the tail and add a second engine behind the cockpit.
Officially designated the Yak-16, within the Yakevlov bureau it was known as the "Over-Under".
Whether it was called the Over-Under due to the unique layout or the pilot's chances at surviving the aircraft's horrible flight characteristics may never be known.
By mid-1948, the aircraft made it through flight testing, probably due to an increase of alcohol deliveries to the Ron Bass region that was home to the Yakevlov flight test center.
Fielded in numbers so small it was never given a NATO reporting name, western analysts called it the "up-down" not realizing this was very close to the unofficial Soviet ground crew moniker which roughly translates as "up-chuck".
Only 20 Yak-16s were built, just enough to equip one test squadron. After six months of service, only three were left, the others being lost in crashes due to manufacturing defects, pilot error and overall apathy for the unusual type.
No Yak-16s survive today and the revolutionary design is often wrongly considered a fake by so-called "experts" who think it's wholly the product of some anonymous, fevered imagination.
However, grainy black and white photos and almost illegible accompanying documentation discovered after the fall of communism dispute this and the debate continues interminably on various internet forums.
Brian da Basher