Yakovlev Yak-9
A lightened upgrade of previous Yakovlev fighters, the Yak-9 was initially deployed in October of 1942, and saw its first combat soon thereafter during the Battle of Stalingrad. Standard armament was a nose-mounted 20mm cannon, plus one or two heavy machine guns. It was used mainly to support ground troops by shielding them from German air attacks, and strafing enemy troops when feasible.
In contrast to what came before, Soviet pilots considered the Yak-9 to be the equal of the German Bf 109 and FW-190 fighters, especially at lower altitudes where the light Yak-9, although inferior to the Germans in armaments, proved their superior in speed and maneuverability and rate of climb, thus allowing it to excel in low-level dogfighting. It also proved remarkably durable, able to absorb significant damage and punishment and still make it back home.
The light fighter’s markedly improved performance over that of its predecessors was instrumental in restoring Soviet pilots’ confidence after the catastrophic losses they had suffered in the first year of the war, caused by poor training and tactics, but more importantly, by inferior airplanes that were no match for the modern fighters flown by the Luftwaffe.
The restoration of its fighter pilots’ confidence in their equipment finally allowed the Red Air Force to begin clawing its way back up and gradually stabilize the situation on the Eastern Front, as the Soviet air arm slowly replaced the marked aerial inferiority exhibited against the Germans with aerial parity, then superiority, and by war’s end, supremacy. After its successful introduction over the skies of Stalingrad, the Yak-9 gradually became the Soviet Union’s main fighter of the war, and by 1944, there were more Yak-9s in service than all other Soviet fighters combined.
As with other fighters that did particularly well in the war, the Yak-9’s success was due in no small to the versatility of its basic design, allowing for steady improvements as the war progressed, and for utilization in a variety of roles. In addition to a defensive fighter, the adaptable Yak-9s were also put to uses such as reconnaissance, long-range bomber escorts, nighttime fighters, armed with 37mm or 45mm cannons and used as tank busters, general ground attacks, and when equipped with bomb loads of up to 1000 pounds, the planes could also serve as light bombers. The Yakovlev Yak-9 was the most produced fighter in the history of the Red Air Force, with over 16,000 rolling out of Soviet factories.