Was this the most advanced Russian jet? - Yak 141

September 1991 a new Russian Navy aircraft is landing vertically on the deck of the Admiral grosskov aircraft carrier yukilev design Bureau went all in for one last attempt to try and get back its Old Glory Days of the Soviet Union a new design that held 12 World Records all the way from the prototype to its completed construction but was doomed to fail from the start today we'll be talking about the aircraft that probably inspired the Lockheed and American Engineers when designing the vertical F-35 and how its impact on Russian Aviation is still felt today this is yak 141 foreign let's be clear the Soviet navy was Never As Good As the U.S one the Soviets had a different Doctrine centered around hunting U.S aircraft carrier groups and delivering nuclear payloads to them via submarines from distant polar regions thus their Naval Aviation was well as you can guess so far behind the US that the Russian Navy would be decimated in a toe-to-toe conflict so in the early 1980s they decided to change that the yak 38 was the main naval aircraft of the Soviet navy and Kiev class aircraft carriers or should I say heavy aircraft Cruisers per Soviet classification even in the words of eucalev it was always meant to be an interim solution the Construction and design of the yak-38 was only meant to be a study to develop Technologies in production for a more capable Naval jet so that time time had come by 1975. the ukulelev bureau got one simple task make a new jet that would be able to defend the fleet from enemy aircraft the simple part wasn't so simple of course because they wanted a real fight at this time that could outperform the F-14 Tomcat and even f-18s which wasn't an easy task at all and oh did I mention that this new fighter jet also had to be veto capable meaning it could take off vertically and also fly supersonic yeah the stakes were high but eucalev was sure that this was their time to shine looking back into the past we can see that the yak-141 was going to be a huge game changer for the Soviets and then the later on Russian Navy it would have radically changed how they operated on the high seas for the better but you don't have to take my word for it when you can test the aircraft yourself in today's video sponsor War Thunder don't fast forward on that timeline because I'm inviting you to come and play with me and fly some of the craziest aircraft ever built in War Thunder a free online military vehicle combat game War Thunder features over 2 000 different land CNN machines from 1920s to the cold war that you can fly drive and cruise to challenge yourself to be better than the aces of the past my favorite so far being the P400 the yak 141 isn't in the latest update so make sure that you're in the game that you've done the tutorial in the missions to be ready to fly with me and reconquer the skies in the name of the Soviet navy you can play solo missions or my favorite in huge air battles with over 100 different Maps that's right huge battles that we can all play together we played a few months ago and it was the most chaos I've ever seen in a match and I can't wait to do it again I'm still very much a beginner in the game so you have a great chance to save me from other players or if you really want shoot me down unlike everyone else did last time when you make an account with my link you'll get a free bonus premium tank aircraft and ship as well as a boost to your account the game's free to play across all platforms PC PlayStation and Xbox and you can cross play with anybody on any other device so you don't need anything a keyboard and a mouse on the basic PC will run it so no excuse to not make an account with my link do the tutorial and come and play with me next time it's going to be an absolute blast I know I'll add the details of how to find each other in the description down below the first issue with this design was the most obvious one how that how the heck do you create a supersonic aircraft capable of vertical Landing eucalev himself decided to go all in with this project and put the very best Engineers on development in a study of feasibility of this design so they could then create an aircraft capable of hitting all the right spots with both the government and the Navy you have to remember by this point in the story eucalypt had seen what had happened to sohoi and the other Aerospace manufacturers in Russia when it came to politics they knew that the case study was most likely to change at a whim and they wanted to be prepared as possible the most interesting part of this new design was the engine or better yet engines the first Concepts called for a single engine with a flat thrust vectoring nozzle similar to what Boeing did on the x-32 down the line but they scrapped that and decided to go for a much more complicated but also more rewarding system now bear with me because this is going to go a little deep dive into engineering the main engine was the soyuz r-79b 300 after burning turbofan that had an extremely interesting thrust of vectoring nozzle the issue here was how to rotate the nozzle downwards and then back up whilst performing a landing on a deck and to do it gradually so the pilot wouldn't lose control and the lift engines could provide enough power to have it hover in place over a rolling deck you can see here that the engineers from the soyuz bureau solve this by creating a rotating nozzle segment which by rotating in the opposite direction completely changed the flow and this is exactly how the f-35's Pratt and Whitney f-135 engine works today but more on that Lockheed connection later the other engineering problem that they had to solve was the lift engines they wanted to use just one lift engine separately from the main one but if that engine failed at any point during the landing the plane would crash and cause chaos on Deck so instead they opted for two rd-41 engines which would provide enough power for hovering their system was also very good because the lift engines would take cold air from the top of the aircraft and not the hot air which would lead to overheating which is another problem that the Boeing x-32 had a few decades later with this design although very complicated proved to be very good and gave the yak 41 great performance in Flight unfortunately it was downhill from here initially eucalypt was granted funding for four prototypes and the idea was to have the aircraft in serial production by the end of the 1980s however the death of the defense minister eustanov in 1984 and yokolev's retirement the program slowed down they were also waiting for the engine which was supposed to be ready by the end of 1984. so instead of having a pretty serial production aircraft they only had their first flight of the yak-41 by 1987 with a plan for serial production by the early 90s Flash Forward to 1991 and there was a great success with the jet performing its first takeoffs and landings on a carrier deck but this news probably would have been at the back of the local newspaper because the Soviet Union fell apart the economic shock of this development put an end to many prospective projects throughout the Soviet military but the eucalypt bureau was still clinging to their dream and decided to continue on on their own dime testing of the last two flying prototypes before going Fort State trials you're probably asking yourself now why am I saying Yak 41 when the title of this video says Yak 141 well there's an interesting piece of trivia behind that a couple years back during flight testing 12 world records were set but the Soviets wanted to keep the aircraft secret so instead of its real designation they called it the yak 141 and it also just became that in the West it was initially designed as a naval vital jet during development phase the requirements were changed no surprise there of course and now the Navy wanted a multi-role aircraft instead capable of also carrying anti-ship and anti-radar missiles like the kh-31 air-to-air missiles would have been from the standard Russian Arsenal such as the r-73s for close and the r27 for Mid to long range along with the brand new r-77s Superior to their older counterparts it would also carry two external fuel tanks that could be placed underneath the wings and give it an extended range it's also interesting to note that the yak 141 was built using Composite Materials some 25 which was a new technology for the Soviets and Russians at the time the radar would have been a pulse Doppler one and maybe even powerful ones initially developed for the mig-31s in the late 70s all in all this would have been one very capable Naval Jet and a very nice variety of the newest Russian missiles able to form a great variety of tasks both against air and ground targets in late 1991 test pilot yakimov made a hard landing on the deck of the aircraft carrier and the Prototype fighter jet caught on fire although he ejected in time and survived this would actually prove to be the nail in the coffin for the project at least on paper because the reality was there was simply not enough funds for serial production the entire team were all working on borrowed time and they probably knew that by the end of the development cycle that they could only fulfill their dream of making this thing actually fly funding was cut in production plans abandoned but you could love Bureau found one unlikely and interesting partner to shift forwards new technology it was none other than Lockheed Who provided further funding most likely in exchange for valuable r d information and experiences with the platform so the yak 141 was presented to the public at the farm Borough air show in 1992. by 1993 it was shown one last time at the Moscow Air Show and both prototypes were sent over to the museums where they stand to this day Lockheed with its x-35 and down the line the F-35 ended up using many of yuccolev's solutions for their aircraft although further developed and much Superior technologically it was probably one of the most interesting and frankly unexpected corporations in aviation history thank you so much for watching I hope you enjoyed and please do check out our patreon for extra content and early releases and don't forget to smash that subscribe button like the Pentagon smash taxpayers dollars in the jtf program and give this video a like so the algorithm loves us and leave the comment section on fire until the next one

Channel: Found And Explained

Views: 980,386

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Id: -a6y0sAXkV4

Length: 12min 19sec (739 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 24 2023