Yakovlev AIR-12

The Yakovlev AIR-12 was a long-range sport aircraft designed and built in the Soviet Union in the late 1930s, intended for record-breaking long-distance flights. It had a welded steel tube nose structure, plywood-skinned wooden wings of high aspect ratio and a fabric-covered rear fuselage, with a pilot and a passenger or navigator in two closed cockpits and a 100 hp Shvetsov M-11 radial engine, later replaced by a 150 hp M-11Ye. Flight testing began in August 1936, and on 21 September 1936 Yulian Piontkovskiy flew it from Moscow to Kharkiv to Sevastopol and back to Kharkiv, about 2,000 km in 10 hours 45 minutes. A flight in October 1937 covered 1,444 km but was not recognised by the FAI because no official observer was present.