Yakovlev Yak-36

The Yakovlev Yak-36 was a Soviet experimental aircraft built to show that a jet fighter could take off and land vertically. Yakovlev's design bureau began work on vertical flight in 1960, first sketching a converted trainer with extra lift engines and then settling on a twin-engined layout with swivelling exhaust nozzles on either side of the fuselage close to the centre of gravity. The fighter itself was not pursued, but four technology demonstrators were ordered, one of which served only for static testing. Compressed engine air blown from nozzles at the wingtips, the tail and a forward boom steered the machine in the hover. The first tethered hover came on 9 January 1963, the first untethered vertical flight on 23 June 1963 and the first full transition to horizontal flight on 16 September 1963. A prototype crashed in February 1971 and was not rebuilt, while the second prototype survives at the Central Air Force Museum at Monino.