Yakovlev Yak-3M

The Museum’s Yakovlev Yak-3M is one of a small production run of these aircraft built around the time of the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991. Yakovlev, seeking foreign currency to stabilize its business, assessed that there was a market for Russian warbirds in the West. As a result, they restarted a (limited) production run of Yak-3 type aircraft using original parts, tooling, and, no doubt, some of the original workers who had constructed the type during WWII. These aircraft extended the type’s serial number sequence, carrying on from the final example built during the war years. The principal difference between the Yak-3M and its wartime counterparts is its use of an American Allison V-1710 engine in place of the virtually unobtainable, Russian-built Klimov VK-105 engine which powered wartime variants. 

The Yak-3 was amongst the most successful Soviet aircraft designs of WWII, with 4,848 Yak-3s being built during the conflict. The Luftwaffe viewed the Yak-3 as a serious threat, advising its pilots to avoid tangling with them at low altitudes because of their superior performance in that environment. The Soviet’s approach to fighter development during WWII involved focusing different design bureaus on specific challenges; the Yak-3 being tasked with overcoming the Luftwaffe at low altitudes, directly over a battlefield, so that Soviet ground-attack aircraft like the famed Il-2 Sturmovik could have a clear run against German ground forces. 

The Normandie-Niemen Fighter Regiment: A unit of Free-French fighter pilots served with the Soviet Union’s 1st Air Army on the Eastern Front. It was one of just three units from the Western Allies to see service in that region’s brutal conditions. The Regiment, with its French pilots, fought in three campaigns alongside the Soviet Union between March 1943 and May 1945. The unit received numerous accolades from both the French and Soviet governments, and each pilot was allowed to fly his Yak home to France at the end of WWII.