4 photos from Wikimedia Commons · credits & licences
- 1. Jak23 yak23: Pibwl· Public domain
- 2. Yak-23 at Ianca: Unknown author Unknown author· Public domain
- 3. Yak 23 monino: Floe· CC BY-SA 3.0
- 4. Yakovlev Yak-23UTI at Museum of technique of Vadim Zadorogny: Vitaly V. Kuzmin· CC BY-SA 4.0
what is it?
The Yakovlev Yak-23 (Russian: Яковлев Як-23; USAF/DoD reporting name Type 28, NATO reporting name Flora) is an early Soviet jet fighter with a straight wing. It was developed from the Yak-17 in the late 1940s and used a reverse-engineered copy of a British engine. It was not built in large numbers as it was inferior in performance to the swept-wing Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15.
How to recognise it: 1 jet engine · mid wing · 8.7 m wingspan
base stats
Bars compare against all aircraft: 3,500 km/h, 20,000 km, 850 seats; size and number built on a log scale up to 640 t (An-225) and 45,000 built (Cessna 172).
fun facts
- First flew 79 years ago, in 1947.
- Top speed is 7.1× a car on the Dutch motorway (130 km/h).
- Range of 1,200 km: 7× Amsterdam to Brussels.
- Can fly 1.7× higher than Mount Everest (8,849 m).
jet: Gas turbine pushing air out the back (turbofan or turbojet): fast and high-flying.
spec sheet
- first flight
- 1947-07-08
- introduced
- 1949
- number built
- 313
- role
- fighter aircraft
- origin
- 🇷🇺 Soviet Union
- makers
- Tbilisi Aircraft Manufacturing, Yakovlev
- engines
- 1× Klimov RD-500
- crew
- 1
- length
- 8.1 m
- wingspan
- 8.7 m
- height
- 3.3 m
- max take-off weight
- 3,384 kg
- top speed
- 925 km/h
- range
- 1,200 km
- ceiling
- 14,800 m
- wings
- mid wing
Specs are for the version in the Wikipedia article's specification section. Blank means the sources don't say.
Sources: Wikidata Q852159, Wikipedia: Yakovlev Yak-23 (CC BY-SA 4.0).Updated 2026-10-24.