Was the Yak-38 any good?

Were the Soviets too broke to do anything with it?

250 Piece Survival Gear First Aid Kit

LifeStraw Water Filter for Hiking and Preparedness

250 Piece Survival Gear First Aid Kit

  1. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Yes and yes

  2. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Payload was minuscule even compared to the Harrier, landing characteristics were horrible and they had to keep switching the numbers on them to make it appear like they had more than they actually did.
    Your guess is as good as mine.

  3. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    absolute shit that didnt work

  4. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    no payload no range pure dogshit

  5. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    The Yak was "Baby's first VTOL" that was good for nothing but a test bed, but the Soviets didn't have anything better so they used them anyway.

    I mean I guess as poor man's naval bomb trucks they could have done an average job despite carrying less ordinance than fricking trainer plane.

    Sometimes I wonder about an AH where Russia for some trollish reason gives the UK some Yaks to use in the Falklands. Would the Bongs refuse or would they use them once realize they suck and promptly use them as decoys.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Yak-38 was babies first jet carrier aircraft on top of being babies first VTOL jet.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Bong aviation in the falklands was limited by deck space, not airframe numbers. They'd say thanks for the Yak and melt them down for scrap because they were nigh irredemable shitheaps.

  6. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    garbage, the two-seater variant is an abomination
    its successor, the freestyle, would've been an actual fighter aircraft

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      That thing was a complete failure too.

  7. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    The thing had shorter range and less payload than a helicopter, along with the issue of large crash rate and expensive pilots and servicing.

    Basically these planes were there for the sake of pretending that they are fixed wing carrier aircraft when they are a burder for a helicopter carrier that further limited its capability.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >crash rate
      Bong Harrier and AV-8B also had a high crash rate, it's one of the challenges of operating VTOL aircraft. Also not one Yak-38 pilot died since it had an auto eject system. From memory about nine Yak-38s crashed during the 80s, which isn't that high

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Wonder how many pilots got ejected out of perfectly good aircraft in controllable flight, due to flaws in the auto eject system?

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          It was designed to activate when an aircraft rolled off the flight deck and couldn't gain lift, ie it was mostly to prevent pilot drownings

  8. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    No, it's worse than a Harrier in just about every way. Yes it's faster than a contemporary GR.3 or FA.2 but with a shorter range and lower max takeoff weight. Think of it like this, if it were truly the Harrier's equal why didn’t it become more widespread and adopted in some form by Russia's allies like China or India after they sold off the carriers the Yak 38 operated from? Why was the Freestyle the only plane to be developed from it and that got canned after 4 planes versus the myriad of Harrier variants operated by tons of nations? Look at it like this, when India bought the Admiral Gorshkov, they never once used the Yak 38s meant for use from the Kiev class carriers. All I can say in favor of it is that it's an interesting testbed aircraft and could've been the precursor to a good plane

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      FRS 1 is the falklands "we've got sidewinders and a basic air search radar" sea harrier

      FA.2 is the "I'm going to blast a homie from 80nm out with an AIM-120" sea harrier from the 90s

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Oh shit got my variants confused, sorry. Regardless my point stands, if the Yak 38 was any good it'd have other variants besides a two seater trainer and a model with an improved engine or would've seen use by anyone else besides the Soviet Navy. Don't try and tell me they didn't try to pawn them off after the collapse, they were selling the shoes off their feet back then

  9. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    They called it "foremast defense aircraft" and "peace dove" for a reason. It was a POS.

  10. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Well, since in a WW3 scenario it would mostly attack commercial shipping during daylight, pretty good

  11. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    One wonders how long the Soviet Union could have lasted if it hadn’t poured so many resources into poor pointless vanity projects.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      The Yak-38 wasn't pointless. It was a light attack aircraft that could be used in blue water conditions during daylight against small or poorly defended surface targets. A Kiev carrier's P-500 missiles would be used against large surface targets or CSGs

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >It was a light attack aircraft that could be used in blue water conditions during daylight against small or poorly defended surface targets.
        Helicopters could do the same at a much lighter maintenance and logistics workload, higher weapons payload and mission time, as well as better mission versatility.
        The Kiev class was a helicopter cruiser burdened by pretending to be a carrier just because "the west has fixed wing carriers so the Soviet Union has to have them too".

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >Helicopters could do the same at a much lighter maintenance and logistics workload, higher weapons payload and mission time, as well as better mission versatility.
          I disagree. Helicopters are extremely vulnerable to ground fire. The Kiev's used them for ASW, SAR and target designation (the P-500 missiles were completely reliant on a helicopter providing targeting data). A flight of Yak-38s attacking a lightly defended ship at high speed would have the upper hand in that situation

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            A flight of Yak-38s would not have the means to effectively attack a lightly defended ship better than a helicopter would, because of its inferior range and payload.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >The Kiev's used them for ASW
            Which was the main priority of the ship after the plans for a full size carrier was dropped because of cost.
            >and target designation (the P-500 missiles were completely reliant on a helicopter providing targeting data).
            >Helicopters are extremely vulnerable to ground fire.
            So helicopters are survivable enough to target designate against a CSG or other major surface combatant unit, but not enough to target designate or launch ASM against a lightly defended target?
            Which is it?

            >I would add, look at how Israeli Mirages attacked the USS Liberty. That's exactly the type of work Yak-38s would be ideal for
            That was in the 60s, late 60s but still, and was a sudden target of opportunity by what was available on alert, not a planned attack.
            And despite attacks by two flights of aircraft it was the torpedo boats that caused significant damage to the ship, that however still failed to sink or completely disable the ship, that continued under her own power from the site of the attack.
            By the time the Kiev class and Yak-38s were put into production attacking surface targets with with strafing, rockets and unguided bombs like the Liberty was already way outdated, specially in a open sea situation.

            A heavy missile/helicopter cruiser with heavy main ASM battery, limited flight deck and rotary airwing with self designated ASM and torpedo capability would have performed the same role without complication of the Yak-38.
            But, no, the USSR needed to have a flat top, because NATO had them.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          I would add, look at how Israeli Mirages attacked the USS Liberty. That's exactly the type of work Yak-38s would be ideal for

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            lol get out slavaboo shitter, nobody will recognize your garbage ass plane

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      the ussr was broken on a much deeper economic and sociatel level. It was called the prison of nations for a reason. Internal rot and shit economy just manifested in the shit military. Stronk on paper, riddled with all of the problems you see now in ukraine on a fundamental level.

      Add on top the russians talent for turning everything they touch to shit and its death was inevitable. If westerners ever wanted a serious opponent in the cold war should have let the autismo Reich take its place in the Cold war. Imagine german Reich (very similar to USSR on a structural level) with german neuroticism and autism going into things like the space race. The finish line would have been on Mars with the moon only a midway pitstop. Also instead about barking about muh nooks (that may or may not work) the spergs would have actually gone through with it by the 1970s/80s at minimum.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        The ironic thing was that East Germany was probably the only useful fighting force in europe Soviets could rely on, since all their other occupied countries weren't prepared nor willing to participate in their war.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        homie the soviets and west were equal in military strength basically the entire cold war until the late 70s. and for a time between the late 60s and early 70s they were better. they were very much a serious opponent and we only started to gap them because of brezhnevs moronation.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >ywn see the great irrigation of central asia from the northern river reversal program

Leave a Reply to Anonymous Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *