The Soviet Union’s Yak-38 fighter was the Soviet Union’s attempt to keep up with advances in Vertical Short/Takeoff and Landing (VSTOL) capabilities in Western fighters. The Yak-38 was ...

Introducing the Yak-38. Eager to copy the United Kingdom’s Harrier design, Soviet engineers got to work on their own variant. The A.S. Yakovlev Design Bureau sketched the first drawings of the ...

The Yak-38 proved far from a perfect solution. During testing in Afghanistan, it was discovered that the fighter kicked up so much dirt, dust, and debris that it threatened to clog up the engines.

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The Yak-38 scared NATO when it first appeared on Soviet ships in the late 1970s, but it was a relatively basic fighter with no radar, unsophisticated fire control, and limited capacity for weapons.

Where the Yak-38 famously wasn't allowed to go supersonic for safety reasons, the Yak-141's sleek body and rugged airframe were built to smash the sound barrier.

The Yak-38 only saw combat in landlocked Afghanistan. At least four Yak-38s operated alongside other Soviet jets from a base in the country's southwest in 1980.

The Yak-38 was intended to be an aircraft carrier fighter jet, which is where so much of the Soviet mind was fixated on: challenging the Americans on the High Seas with a carrier force of their own.

National Air and Space Museum Technical Reference Files: Aircraft / Series A: Aircraft / Aircraft Y / Yakovlev (Russia) The majority of the Archives Department's public reference requests can be ...