Yak-15: First Soviet Jet

In the first years after World War II, Soviet aviation found itself in a pretty weird situation. Industry had ramped up production of thousands of modern piston-engine fighters, and the ranks were filled with hundreds of pilots hardened in combat against the Luftwaffe. But at the same time, jets — the German Schwalbes and the British Meteors — were already flying over Europe, while the Soviet Union still had no working jet engine of its own. A promising project by engineer Arkhip Lyulka was scrapped after the German invasion because the engineer had to be evacuated to the Ural mountains. And although Soviet design bureaus conducted experiments with jet and rocket engines from 1942 through 1945, none ever reached serial production.