One of the smallest and lightest combat fighters fielded by any combatant during World War II, the Yak-3 had the highest power-to-weight ratio – better than any other fighter – and it proved to be a formidable dogfighter. Between 1942 and 1943, Yakovlev built the Yak-1M, a prototype that would ultimately lead to the Yak-3. Further development work led to the Klimov VK-105PF2 twelve-cylinder, liquid-cooled, V-12 engine receiving a boost to its manifold pressure, enabling it to improve performance on the design. So significant was the new design’s performance that production of the older designs was suspended and redirected towards the new Yak-3, which entered service in 1944. By 1946, 4,848 Yak-3 aircraft had been built.
Once in the air, the Yak-3 was a forgiving, easy to handle aircraft loved by both novice and experienced pilots. It was robust, easy to maintain and highly successful dog-fighter. That said, it could be difficult during take-off and even more so during landing!

Initial combat successes with the aircraft were good, proving more than a match for the Axis opposition. So successful was the Yak-3 inflicting significant losses on the Luftwaffe that Goering gave orders to “avoid combat below five thousand metres with Yakovlev fighters lacking an oil cooler intake beneath the nose!” At the time, the kill ratio of Soviet-versus-German aircraft was between five- and ten-to-one, a situation completely unsustainable for the Luftwaffe.

Towards the end of the war, and with the Luftwaffe destroyed in the air, the Yak-3 turned its attention to the ground attack role. However, the Klimov liquid cooled engine was considered vulnerable to small arms fire and a decision was taken to re-engine the design with an air-cooled Shvetsov Ash-82 engine (a derivative of the American Wright Cyclone) that left it somewhat less vulnerable to ground fire.

Following the end of World War II, many of these aircraft were converted into two-seat trainers, as the Yak-3UTI, with the aim to reduce the then high attrition rate. Later, a follow-on, two-seat trainer with dual controls – the Yak-11 – was designed and placed into production.

F-AZIM was originally constructed in 1945 and served in Egypt. In the 1980s, the aircraft, along with forty other airframes, was acquired by a French organisation and a production line set up in Romania to remanufacture the type. F-AZIM was the prototype of the first batch of six Yak-3 aircraft with a radial engine. Interestingly, it is estimated that it took 25,000 man-hours to assemble! It made its first post-rebuild flight in 1995.
The current owner acquired the aircraft in 2019 and a complete rebuild followed, before he first flew it in July 2021. The aircraft is powered by a thirty-litre, fourteen-cylinder Pratt & Whitney Twin Wasp radial engine developing 1,200hp. The aircraft has a top speed of around 400-knots and owner Bob Davy says that it flies more like a fast jet than a propeller-driven fighter.