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Yak-14 glider

To clarify, a glider is a pilot-controlled aircraft with good aerodynamics. Usually it does not have its own motor, so it flies behind the plane on a hitch cable. Near the goal of the route, the glider is uncoupled from the "leader", gliding and landing on its own.

After the end of World War II, there was a powerful impetus in the development of the Airborne Forces (VDV) in the USSR. In order to increase their efficiency, work began on the creation of transport aircraft and gliders for the air transportation of weapons, military equipment and soldiers. Success in work awaited the team led by Alexander Yakovlev - the Yak-14 glider appeared.

The global geopolitical, military, economic and ideological confrontation on a world scale between the Soviet Union and the United States as the centers of the communist and capitalist trends flared up immediately after the end of World War II - in 1946. The conditional signal for the start of the Cold War is considered to be the speech of the then retired British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in the American city of Fulton on March 5. He defined "the leading role in the post-war world of the Anglo-Saxon democracies" and called for the construction of an "iron curtain". The monopoly on atomic weapons and their means of delivery turned the heads of Washington strategists and created the illusion of omnipotence.

Based on the experience of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the United States staked in the planned war on atomic bombs, the carriers of which were thought to be strategic bombers. This was reflected in the construction of the armed forces. The air force as a whole, and especially strategic aviation, was increasingly moving forward to a leading position among other branches of the armed forces. In March 1946, a strategic aviation command was created, which included 279 aircraft.

Not having at that time an adequate response to global challenges (they managed to test their own atomic bomb only on August 29, 1949), the Soviet Union made an attempt to strengthen its armed forces following the experience of the Second World War. Since in many operations carried out by the Germans and the allies (for example, the capture of Cyprus in 1941 or the landing in Normandy in 1944), the airborne assault played an important role, the Soviet leadership decided to reorganize the Airborne Forces, to make them as combat-ready as possible, equipped with the most modern technology. According to the directive of the General Staff of October 1946, it was necessary to increase the number of personnel of the Airborne Forces by almost 1.5 times.

Mobile airborne troops with artillery, armored personnel carriers, anti-aircraft weapons and other weapons were supposed to be both thrown from aircraft by parachute and transferred to enemy territory by landing. Gliders were considered as the main means for strengthening the landing troops - in terms of transporting various weapons, including mortar and artillery systems with tractors and self-propelled artillery installations (they were supposed to solve the problem with parachute landing of equipment). As "motors" for them at that time, the Il-12 aircraft created at the Design Bureau of Sergey Ilyushin were best suited - they began to be produced in 1947 (to replace the obsolete Li-2) not only in civilian, but also in transport and landing versions.

In September 1947, the government of the USSR issued an assignment to carry out development work on the creation of an airborne transport glider with dual control. After that, the teams of Sergei Ilyushin, Alexander Yakovlev and Pavel Tsybin simultaneously launched active work in this direction. The latter had the most experience in this area: during the war years, he created the KTs-20 glider (together with Vladimir Kolesnikov), then the Ts-25. The cargo "twenty-fifth" could accommodate a "Willis" car with an anti-tank gun or 25 people, but now such a capacity was considered insufficient, which Joseph Stalin told the designers after listening to the wishes of the commanders of the airborne forces.

The Ilyushins created a large 60-seat glider, called Il-32, the Yakovlevites created an average 35-seat Yak-14. Both turned out to be quite successful, made in the form of a strut-mounted monoplane. The main structural material is stacked chromansile pipes, duralumin sheet and canvas. The Il-32, of course, could hold more cargo, but there were problems with its transportation: the Tu-75 aircraft intended for towing did not have time to create, and the Tu-4, Tu-70 or Il-18 were either not available, or the command considered it irrational to use acutely scarce machines for this purpose. It turned out to be difficult for the Il-12 aircraft to perform this work due to the insufficient power of both propeller units.

A happier fate awaited the Yak-14. However, success did not come immediately. According to the memoirs of veterans of the Design Bureau. A.S. Yakovlev, the most important designer, who had not previously dealt with gliders, was helped by test pilot Sergei Anokhin. He recalled that a German Gota 242 glider had been standing near Naro-Fominsk for a long time, which our pilots had overtaken from Germany in 1945. "Gotu" was transported to the OKB factory yard on Leningradsky Prospekt, dismantled and studied in detail - the most successful structural elements were used. The project of the Soviet airframe, which was developed by the leading aircraft designers of the Design Bureau Leon Shekhter and Yevgeny Adler, was prepared in October 1947.

The Yak-14 was a high-wing aircraft with a large truss box-shaped fuselage, the nose and tail of which folded back, which made it possible to load the airframe from two directions. One of the reasons for this decision was the assumption that in a combat situation, when landing, the glider could crash into an obstacle, after which unloading to one side would be impossible. At the same time, the pilots were initially going to be placed in the center of the fuselage. Already during the discussion of the project, Alexander Yakovlev nevertheless suggested moving the cockpit to the left to improve visibility for the glider crew commander. Realizing that the paratroopers needed a roomy vehicle capable of lifting a truck or gun along with the crew, the designers tried to use the entire fuselage compartment to the maximum.

The glider was built already in 1948. Adler and Leonid Selyakov were appointed lead engineers for the Yak-14 in the Design Bureau, and pilots from different regiments of the Airborne Forces tested the machine.

After the first towing and flight evaluations in March 1949, the military proposed to increase the vehicle’s load to 3.5 tons in order to transport the new ASU-57 airborne self-propelled guns, which were just entering service with the Airborne Forces, and add a device for landing on snow, i.e. . make skis. In addition, it was necessary to redo the control scheme to facilitate landing on small areas. It was this modified version that was presented to the Air Force Research Institute for state tests.

Tests of the modified Yak-14, carried out by the glider pilot Yevgeny Oleinikov and the pilot of the Il-12 towing aircraft Anatoly Alekseev under the guidance of the lead engineer Nikolai Sorokin, showed that the maximum speed of the aerocoupler at an altitude of 1,920 m was 277 km / h, and it took 18 minutes. The glider met the requirements of the military, but they wished to increase its carrying capacity by another 100 kg.

Following the successful passage of state tests, the Yak-14 was recommended for serial construction. The first four cars in 1948-1949 were made at plant No. 464 in Dolgoprudny near Moscow. The results of the flights were recognized as positive, and the command of the Airborne Forces confirmed the previously issued order for 200 Yakovlev gliders. Now plants No. 168 in Rostov-on-Don and No. 47 in Orenburg have joined the production.

The construction was in full swing when military tests of gliders were already carried out. According to their results, it was noted that, in general, the military were satisfied with the machine. Nevertheless, the shortcomings of glider trains, including the Il-12 and Yak-14, were the difficulty or even the impossibility of flying in the squadron formation in severe weather conditions or at night, the strong stretching of battle formations when flying in the "column of links" formation. It also became clear that the towing of gliders, especially in formation flight, requires a constant increased mode of operation of the motors, which led to their rapid wear.

Thus, despite all the advantages of the Yak-14 glider itself, its mass use in major military operations was constrained primarily by the capabilities of the Il-12 towing aircraft. One of the options for improving the flight characteristics of glider trains could be the installation of rocket launch boosters on a towing aircraft, but things did not go further than experiments.

The formation of the Western military alliance in the form of a NATO bloc in 1949 only increased the danger to the USSR, including through the use by the Americans of the airfields of the member countries of the alliance. In addition, the former allies created the first drifting station and an ice airfield near the Pole, capable of receiving aircraft (even heavy four-engine ones). The intensity of patrol flights along the Soviet borders only increased. Then Stalin ordered to start building our jump airfields on the ice floes of the Arctic Ocean (the flight range of Soviet bombers of that time was insufficient for retaliatory strikes on the territories of the alleged enemy). In my opinion, this was also a significant reason for the resurgence of interest in large gliders. Confirms this and that that some orders to the leading aircraft designers on this topic were given personally by the leader of the USSR, while usually such plans were discussed and approved in the Ministry of the Aviation Industry, and the minister or his deputies gave instructions. Stalin intervened in this mechanism only in the most important cases.

In 1950-1951, 12 years after the closure of the drifting station "North Pole-1" ("SP-1", 1937-1938), work was resumed on the ice floe: "SP-2", and then "SP- 3", "SP-4". There now not only purely research tasks were solved, but material was also collected in the interests of the country's defense. Not everyone could deliver transport aircraft of that time, and generators, radar stations, bulldozers, etc. were required for full-fledged work. This is where VTA gliders came in handy.

For example, in the spring of 1954, they were used to deliver large-sized equipment and machinery to the SP-4 Arctic station, which was operating at that time not far from the Pole. Four gliders were to fly on a cable from Tula (Myasnovo airfield) to Cape Schmidt, and from there onto the drifting ice. The first air train, piloted by the crews of the Hero of the Soviet Union, pilot Alexander Kharitoshkin (Il-12 aircraft) and glider pilot Mikhail Pavlukhin (Yak-14), started on March 10. Following them, other crews took off. Air trains reached Cape Schmidt with intermediate stops in Kazan, Sverdlovsk (Yekaterinburg), Omsk, Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk, Podkamennaya Tunguska, Igarka, Khatanga, Cape Kosisty, Tiksi and Pevek. There, the gliders were loaded with various heavy equipment. To transport the bulldozer, it was necessary to remove the upper tracks of the tracks, but even in this state, its weight exceeded the allowable load of the Yak-14 by 700 kg. The expedition leader took a risk, which nevertheless paid off - the glider survived, the flight lasting 109 hours ended successfully. Then the gliders remained on the SP-4, and the towing aircraft returned to Wrangel Island.

Many sources indicate that this was the only case of the use of gliders in the Arctic latitudes. However, about three years earlier, the military transport group had already been involved in flights to the North Pole region. Then the already mentioned Alexander Kharitoshkin was leading, and the air trains consisted of Il-12 aircraft and Ts-25 gliders. However, the load and flight duration turned out to be significantly less than when using more advanced Yak-14s.

In the mid-1950s, the era of landing gliders ended. In total, by the end of 1952, 417 Yak-14 gliders were handed over to the military - they remained in history as the most load-lifting Soviet mass-produced non-motorized vehicles. They were replaced by heavy transport aircraft and helicopters, which successfully began to solve tasks that were previously considered extremely difficult for aviation.