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Heavy Duty Fighter: ICM's Yak-9


The plane:

For an insight on the Yak-9, you can go to its Wikipedia page, since its development is very intricate. Suffice to say that, along with their radial Lavochkin counterparts, they and their pilots managed to turn the tide on the ever changing game that was the air war on the Eastern Front (Western naturally, for our russian friends), garnering no small appreciation to a people not used to have other heroes than the ones dictated by the Kremlin.

The Yak-9 had so many variants it is impossible to list here. As an incremental design based on the former Yak-7 family of trainer/fighters, it was tough and maneuverable, cleaner and faster, with a lighter punch than the 7 pound by pound, but still a valuable and dangerous opponent to any Luftwaffe pilot. The best correlation to both designs is to say, I believe, they were sort of Vitali and Vladimir Klitschko on wings.

Stemming from the harsh conditions on the Stalingrad battle in 1942, the 9 kept on soldiering, every time finer, faster and deadlier untill the Korean War saw it and its Lavochkin counterpart - always Semyon there, lurking in the back of Aleksander's neck - being relegated to secondary tasks by the early winner and then loser of the Great Patriotic War: Mikoyan Gurevitch. The jet age had not yet rendered obsolete the piston engine, but it whistled a very different tune, full of promises.

The man:


 Ivan Ivanovitch Kleshchev in front of his Yak-7b fighter, displaying 14 victories behind the cockpit.

Excerpts from russian Wikipedia: Major Ivan Ivanovitch Kleshchev was born on January 26, 1918 in the village of Kuryachivka (now - Markovsky district, Lugansk region of Ukraine) in the family of a worker. Ukrainian.

In 1933 he graduated from the first year of a pedagogical technical school in Voroshilovgrad. He worked as a locksmith at the locomotive plant in Novocherkassk (now the Novocherkassk Electric Locomotive Plant). 

As a child, he dreamed of becoming a pilot and joined the Rostov flying club. He graduated from the Borisoglebsk Military Aviation School of Pilots. In the Red Army since 1937, he graduated from the military school of fighter pilots. A battle hardened pilot since the massive aerialfights on the river Khalkhin-Gol (Mongolia) in 1938/39, he was involved in fighter operations since the very beginning of the Great Patriotic War in June 1941. 

By the middle of March 1942 as commander of a Fighter Aviation Regiment, Kleshchev had logged 220 sorties, personally shooting down 6 airplanes and 13 group - achieved victories. In May 5, 1942, for the exemplary fulfillment of the combat assignments of the commander at the front against the German fascist invaders and the courage and heroism shown, he was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. 

In May 1942, Kleschev was appointed commander to the 434th Fighter Aviation Regiment (IAP). The regiment included specially selected pilots with great combat experience. The regiment was personally supervised by Vasily Stalin, with whom Kleshchev was on friendly terms. From June 13 to July 6, 1942, the pilots of the regiment conducted intense air battles on the South-Western Front.

From July to October 1942, the 434th IAP fought at Stalingrad. September 19, 1942, during a battle, Kleshchev's plane was set on fire. The pilot jumped with a parachute. Strongly burned, he was sent to the hospital. For that, he would lose his prized Gold Star, which had been awarded to him only a few weeks before. After recovering, from November 1942, he served in the Inspectorate of the Air Force of the Red Army and in the management of the 269th Fighter Aviation Division of the Stavka Reserve.

Official affairs in December 1942 led Ivan Kleshchev to the airfield of the town of Rasskazov, where the 6th Reserve Aviation Regiment (ZAP) was based. The main activity of the regiment was aimed at restoring the fighting capacity of the drained units from the front, their completion and preparation for battles.

He died December 31, 1942 when landing at the airfield Rasskazovo (Tambov region) in adverse weather conditions. He was buried at the local cemetery.

By the time of his death Ivan Kleshchev had made 380 sorties, and shot down personally and collaboratively about 50 enemy aircraft. In the sources, the number of Kleschev's victories differs, and various data are given - from 35 to 54 aircraft. The most common figures are 16 enemy airplanes personally and 32 in collaboration, making a grand total of 48.



The kit: ICM's Yak-9 #72023

When ICM kits arrived to Argentina in the late 90's, it was a real shock to the devotee of lesser known aircraft. Not that the Yak-9 was one of those, but to have a nice kit of the Polikarpov I-15bis with a plethora of markings and the Il-400b with some incredible corrugated detail was beyond what the average modeler was used to when it came to Eastern Block kits from Poland, East Germany, Russia and the likes. Crude was the name of the game and ICM topled the table with such kits. Mind me, some of them were not easy to build or finish (more on that later) but they were a major step forward in that direction.

This kit had 5 different versions, two fuselages - standard for fighter, B bombing and R recce versions and with the cockpit further back for the large gauge cannon armed T and K variants.

A casual run into a friend, Gustavo Machado, brought the opportunity to have a coffee at his home and to peruse (rumage?) through his kits. He said to me that a common acquaintance of us was giving up modeling due to his poor health and Gustavo had several of his half-built kits there. One of them was ICM's Yak-9. He refused to accept any money, just to have them built so they would not sit on a shelf for years. I accepted gladly and so begun my journey with this kit.
 

First thing to do was to sand and polish all the seams, this kit being famous for its - punch line here - infamous nose fitting. One of the most ofendig sections is the lower cooler and forward cover. It was vigorously sanded into shape and sumission after several applications of superglue. The rear flap for the oil cooler was cut since it was beyond reshaping and a folded tab of plastic card took its place. Look better now. The upper nose was less problematic but still a nuisance. Take care to keep an even profile, for the fuselage halves are not exactly the same size and can play havoc when fitting the windshield.


Another point of conflict is the lower side. The wing underside fits in a slot surrounded by the flaps and radiator position. Luckily, it come as a separate part. After some hideous sanding and filling, a large triangular piece of plastic card was fitted upon the right hand lower fuselage join, plastered with UHU plastic cement and left to dry. Once it was thouroughly sanded, it was time to polish somewhat the join to further even the area where the rear of the radiatior sits. With the piece glued, it was contoured with some superglue and a new radiator flap added, following photos found on the web. It look better that way to my non-nitpicking eye.


Also the tailplanes received some attention, since they need to be, if not neatly contoured, positively level with their root fairings. At this points I beveled the fuel cap covers further out the wing and drilled the recesses for the fuel gauges near the root. They are very visible and add a bit more of detail without needing great work to achieve them. The canopy was carefully beveled at the edges to improve its sit when attached. Before that, a light wash was given with H-33 Matt Black to the already painted interior, the gunsight was glued into place after painting with H-167 Light Grey and H-33. A small rectangle of clear plastic was used for the glass and attached with Clearfix. Finally, some seatbelts were fashioned from lead foil and panited a combination of Light Buff and H-11.


At this point, with the cabin, antena and pitot tube attached, it was time to start painting. I had the immense joy of being presented by a dear friend with Hataka's HTK-AS33 Early WW2 Soviet Air Force paint set, a polish brand which has, as for the moment I'm writing these words, garnered respect across the modeling community for its superb range of specific colour sets.


This particular set contains eight acrylic paints for the 1937-42 period. These are AII (Aluminium), AE-9 Light Grey, AIIz (Protective Green), AIIg Light Blue, AMT-6 Black (It also says "Night", "Nochnoy" was a similar colour), AMT-4 Green, AMT-7 Light Blue and MK-7 Temporary White Distemper. All the colours are made to a very high standard, the Black being specially nice, since there's a hint of dark greyish blue to it that works very well in 1/72nd scale. As the Yak-9 entered service in late 1942, Kleshchev's machine had the attractive of being an early production machine painted in AMT-4/12 over AMT-7, with black bordered stars and a sober inscription below the cockpit seal reading "Airplane of the Hero of the Soviet Union Kleshchev" along with a string of victory stars.


A little "heads up" about these paints. They come with a plastic or metal bearing inside, so be enthusiastic when shaking the bottle in order to blend the medium and the pigment. Also, you can use tap water to dillute them, ever so slightly mixed with alcohol to break the surface tension. Best results are achieved with Hataka's or Ammo's thinner. A thin layer of AMT-4 Green was given to the upper surfaces to test the colour. It starts looking Chernobyl Green, and then it settles on a nice Bright Green not at all unlike Eric Pilawskii's wet dreams about Fluorescent Greens and Cherenkov Blues. Remember, it's the first layer. It settles. And looks promising.


With a second layer, less dilluted, things started to look even more promising. What a great coverage. Well done, Hataka! All crevasses covered, the ribbing effect in the sides and moving surfaces was visible, and more important, there were no seams visible. Now, for the AMT-12/"Nochnoy" Black.


As I said before, the black has a distinctive blue-grey hue when you first mix it and paint. It eventually settles to a sort of "black, ma non troppo" kind of colour which looks awesome.


Then, AMT-7 Light Blue was applied in two separate layers. It is very deep and rich, quite similar to the original. A funny thing that happened to me is that the kit had no wheels, landing gear covers or propeller. So the covers were fashioned from plastic card and painted. They look the part, I can pride myself on that one for a change.


With some flash, the rich hue of AMT-7 jumps immediately to sight.


The decaling process was rather fast. I've always had my "love to hate you" affair with ICM's decals. They may not be the most defined decals in the world sometimes, and you have to trim their carrier film right down to the very edge of the colour image, but the older ones are the best to work with. Sometimes they don't even silver at all and look as painted on as they can get. Take the Il-400b I built years ago. Zero silvering or carrier. On this occasion I glossed the surface with Humbrol's Gloss Cote. Yes, Hataka paints also handle enamel varnish. When first applied...




And after drying up thouroughly.



Onto the decals, comrades! Davai!


These decals were hard, but not britle. Trimmed to the minimum, they held their shape nicely. Even the tiny red tech notices for the intrados and fuselage.


On the photos the recesses for the fuel gauges, the wearing of the area around the fuel caps and where the landing gear indicators go are clearly visible.


Ealr production Yak-9s had a wavy demarcation line beetween upper and lower colours that was very appealing to me, besides the wavy green and black pattern.


With all the decaling out of the way, the kit was sprayed with Humbrol's Satin Cote. Being a small aircraft in a small scale, I didn't want it to be too dull but to keep a slight sheen, given they were fresh machines thrown into... the living hell of Stalingrad.

Once the Stain Cote was dry, the sheen is there, but ever so subtle. The red indicators for the landing gear were glued to the extrados, and the landing gear attached. The scissor retraction links were made with stretched sprue and the wheels scavenged from an old Aviation USK I-15bis certainly looked the part.



The propeller and its hub had been assembled and painted at the same time that the fuselage. The prop came from an old Spitfire kit, the blades cut and reshaped to resemble the ViSh-61 propeller of the original.


Weathering was done by using AMMO-Mig's set nro.7 for aircraft, containing Engine Fuel and Oil, Exhaust Black and Exhaust Rust for panelling, spills, exhausts and gun smoke.



The last step was to paint the early type of fuel indicator on the wings and run a silver Faber Castell pencil along the metal forward panels, screw holes and latches.


Final weathering was achieved with washes and dry brushing of the lower areas with some H-118 Light Earth to achieve a dust effect. It was here that I realised I had not installed the armoured glass plate behind the pilot's seat. Minimal cursing threw cigarette consumption two notches up.


While building the Yak, I was also entangled with another ICM kit, the Nakajima Ki-27a. What a beatiful aircraft, and what a work it took to finish. Just now, I'm falling for the fact that Kleshchev would have been fighting this very machine over the Nomonhan plateau in 1939. As usual, a True Modeling Underdog occurrence.



The finished project.










I have a lot of mixed feelings when I stare at this Yak-9. On one hand, the inevitability of human decay and illness that prevent us from "Like every night... we are building our dreams" as the Poznan Modeling Club put it in their social media page. The other, that more often than not we are building machines of war and death, or at least their scale, plastic, almost harmless reproduction. Some as a snare drumming of a bygone era. Others as a warning that "there be dragons".

Me, as a reminder that Gustavo Machado, the friendly gentleman who gave me this kit as a gift - as a chance for the kit not to be stashed - parted company with this world in November of 2016, all of a sudden, an abrupt heart attack and the fine modeller of iraqi and arab aviation was gone.

Abrupt. What a word. Ambrose Bierce said about it "
Sudden, without ceremony, like the arrival of a cannon- shot and the departure of the soldier whose interests are most affected by it. Dr. Samuel Johnson beautifully said of another author's ideas that they were "concatenated without abruption.""

I hope that, wherever you are now, Gus, you'll be enjoying these words for you and our friendship. Hopefully, words that are concatenated without abruption.


Take care and until our next installment,

TMU

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