Development and Design
On February 21, 1949 a Sovmin order requested the Yakovlev OKB to design a lightweight, radar-equipped, all-weather and night interceptor capable of Mach 0.97 at 4,000 m (13,000 ft). The aircraft was to utilize the Klimov VK-1 engine which first appeared on Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 and MiG-17 fighters. This engine was itself a Soviet copy of the British Rolls-Royce Nene centrifugal turbojet initially known as the RD-45. The leading fighter OKBs each created a prototype to meet the requirement, which included the Lavochkin La-200, Mig I-320, Suchoi Su-15 (unrelated to the later aircraft with the same designation) and the Yak-50 (again, unrelated to the later aircraft). A major difference was that while Yakolev used one engine, the other design bureaus used two.
Read more about this topic: Yakovlev Yak-50 (1949)
Famous quotes containing the words development and/or design:
“Men are only as good as their technical development allows them to be.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)
“To nourish children and raise them against odds is in any time, any place, more valuable than to fix bolts in cars or design nuclear weapons.”
—Marilyn French (20th century)