Books on the Aircraft of Yakovlev

     Published by Ivanov/Tornado in 2001. Extremely difficult to find in the UK and Europe although widely advertised by several online retailers. 58 pages including two of colour profiles. 13 pages of 1/48th scale plans. I managed to get a copy of this via the Aviation-Bookshop.com in September 2006. Although they advertised all three volumes this was actually all they had. A good number of black and white photo's and internal assembly sketches. However the paper is cheap and non-glossy. Picture quality is poor and grainy. Book is entirely in Russian with no English whatsoever. Part 3 of Tornado's 'War in the Air' Yak trilogy is quite an impressive volume and focuses solely on the Yak-9 series. These books are worth tracking down if only for the all those pages of scale plans for every possible marque of the Yak-9. Recommended for model makers for those scale plans. Good luck tracking down a copy!

Osprey "Yakovlev Aces of World War 2"

     Published by Osprey Publishing in 2005. You get ninety-six pages with three pretty nice pages of scale plans at the back. There are ten pages of colour plate artworks in the center section. This book only serves the model maker as a source of historical reference. Good if you wish to model a specific machine of one of the many Heroes of the Soviet Union who won their medals on the Yak fighter. However there are no close airframe close-ups and the quality of some photo's is poor, however this is probably no one's fault as good photo's of the Aces are hard to find due to the nature of the war in the Eastern front. The Osprey books get criticised as being pretty lightweight and poor resources of limited historical accuracy. It is a good read with some interesting tales of the pilots who cut their teeth on the Yak. Text dominates each page by about 60%. Quite recommended.

Robert Panek "Yakovlev Yak-9U & P"

     Published by Mushroom Model Publication in Poland in 2006. You get 112 high quality and slickly produced pages consisting of type history for the first thirty pages illustrated with black and white photo's. However, from that point onwards you get nothing but colour starting with colour photo's from the Korean War. Then there is a big section of colour walkaround photo's of examples at the Aviation Museum in Monino, the Gynia Museum in Prague and the Polish Army Museum in Warsaw. From page 86 onward you get a whole load of original colour artworks of different machines. The colour walkaround photo's from the present day preserved machines are compared to similar black and white shots from wartime examples.  There are also scrap views and sketches of certain features such as the engine. This is as much as you could possibly hope for from a book for the modeller and is highly recommended.

Squadron/Signal "Yak Fighter In Action"

     Published by Squadron/Signal in 1986. Written by Hans-Heiri Stapfer with illustrations by Don Greer and Joe Sewell. Fifty-eight pages gives you a center spread of colour artworks. This volume covers I-26 prototypes, Yak-1, Yak-3, Yak-7, Yak-9, Yak-11, Yak-15, Yak-17 and Yak-23. The last three are early jet fighters. Each subject has a good three view line-drawn layout that could almost pass as a scale plan. As usual for this In Action series you also get a reasonable selection of sketches showing the major differences between each type. Photo's are large but grainy and indistinct. Not bad although there is better available.

Polygon "The First Yak"

     Published by Polygon in Moscow in 1995. Entirely in Russian, this is widely regarded as the definitive work on the Yak-1 by the VVS model-making community. You get 136 pages in a good contemporary feel. The texture is semi-glossy and the photo's are all in black and white. The photo's are excellent but not in a walkaround style. The shots are of wartime origin but many show Yak-1's in a factory production line setting being manufactured or being  repaired in the field. However they are not always well reproduced. However you do get an impressive twelve pages of scale plans and diagrams that are said to be of high quality. Additionally there are seven pages of colour artworks at the rear. This is a must have for any modeller serious about producing a Yak-1 but the lack of an English translation limits its appeal.