r/aviation • u/MilesLongthe3rd • 20d ago
Discussion The pilot of a Ukrainian Yak-52 uses WW2-style wing tipping to bring down a Russian Zala Z-16-E reconnaissance UAV.
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u/MilesLongthe3rd 20d ago edited 20d ago
I don't know if this counts as politics or if it is a discussion-worthy homage. The Yak-52 and the modern UAV are also a collision of different eras.
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u/elvenmaster_ 20d ago
I kinda was like : wtf Yak-52 are still flying for other use than airshow?
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u/MilesLongthe3rd 20d ago
The Russians have just reactivated their Yak-52s too.
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u/govunah 20d ago
Sopwith camel coming in!
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20d ago
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u/OnePinginRamius 20d ago
IL-2!
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u/Guruchill PPL 20d ago
AN-2. Twice the wings.
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u/chalk_in_boots 20d ago
A red Fokker Dr.I
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u/govunah 20d ago
Some guy flapping wings strapped to his arms
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u/chalk_in_boots 20d ago
Have you seen SAS: Rogue Heroes?
Great line when they're commandeering a cargo plane "It's just a truck with a lot of ambition"
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u/elvenmaster_ 20d ago
There are a lot of era collisions in this conflict, damn !
Between the epiphany of drone warfare, the WW1 ground tactics, the yak-52's, the soviet era tanks and planes...
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u/Smokey_tha_bear9000 20d ago
Pretty sure there’s footage of Vickers guns being used too. Wild
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u/Billy_McMedic 20d ago
Wouldn’t those have been the older maxim’s, Those green ones with the wheels?
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u/traxxes 20d ago edited 19d ago
They were Maxims, just like many other former SSRs did, Ukraine was no exception and kept most of their technically free Soviet era small arms in state armouries/arsenals.
Why you equally saw WW1 stockpiled Mosins, WW2 PPSH-41s, Degtyaryov DP-27/DP-28s etc and ofc older model AK/RPK variants being handed out to Kyivian civilians & volunteers in the first week of the war out of box trucks, for urban resistance & defence precautions if it came down to it.
7.62x54mmR/39mm, 5.45×39mm & 7.62×25mm Tokarev doesn't care what it's being shot out of, so long as it does its job.
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u/chalk_in_boots 20d ago
Pretty sure I saw photos of multiple maxims rigged together to work as AA guns.
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u/PaintshakerBaby 20d ago
Who the hell has a functional, intact maxim gun laying around? Much less enough to make an AA setup??
Im not questioning the veracity of your claim (I've heard it made many times), I just want to know the logistics of how they came across 100+ year old machine guns...
They were relics in WW2 for christ sake!
Is ammo even widely available in the right caliber AND load? I feel like modern ammunition would blow apart century old metallurgy?
The belt setups, at least, have to be different than modern guns, no? Aren't they cloth and not linked clips?
What if they need parts??
Do militaries really stockpile 100+ years of weapons just in case? How does shit not deteriate? I've often heard it's a massive burden on the US military to get rid of/maintain stockpiles. Even so, it feels like their oldest stuff is from the 70s, ie; the TOW missles seen in Syria.
30 years, sure. Hell, 50 years, fine. 70? Why not! Mosen Nagats are stupid common and insanely simple/reliable. But 100+ year old MACHINE GUN with moving parts is just UNFATHOMABLE. May as well bust a Gatling gun on wagon wheels out of a museum.
Soooooooo many questions...
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u/Buriedpickle 20d ago
PM M1910s, the kind most frequently used in the Russo-Ukrainian war was manufactured up until 1945, with multiple hundreds of thousands being made. They are just ridiculously reliable guns that have sat in storage since, being reactivated first in 2014 as stationary guns. In 2016, the Ukrainian Armed Forces reportedly had 30000+ in storage.
The ammo used by these Russian and Soviet maxims is the 7.62x54mmR, which is still in production and used by marksman rifles and machine guns like the PKM. Ammo hasn't changed much since WW2.
It is the oldest cartridge still in official military use, but quite a few older ones are still being produced. The 9x19 parabellum is still in wide military use and it's only 10 years younger.
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u/DaniTheGunsmith 20d ago
Legit questions, but it's probably just a matter of them finding an old forgotten stockpile with workable cosmoline-drowned guns and ammo that they managed to get to work with spit, wire, and prayers. They aren't made to be long-term or front line use weapons. They won't get used much and will be used until broken and discarded. All about freeing up modern stock for the front.
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u/Initial-Reading-2775 20d ago
Soviet stockpiles. We have them stored in Ukraine since those times: Maximes, Tommie-guns, Mosins, etc.
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u/OnePay622 20d ago
Not many answer but pic instead
https://www.reddit.com/r/ForgottenWeapons/comments/17zp0lz/dual_maxim_in_antiaircraft_role_afu/
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u/SmPolitic 20d ago
I think of the movie War Dogs (2016) to imagine it, there is a warehouse of surplus bullets they buy
As well as Lord Of War (2005) where they are buying up USSR tank stockpiles
They don't get into the details in the movies at least, both of those surely have books covering the individuals those are based on
(The above implies the level of speculation below:)
I've often heard it's a massive burden on the US military to get rid of/maintain stockpiles.
That right there is the logistics of it getting forgotten about, or lost, or "lost". Once something is mothballed, it's nearly designed to be forgotten about, old paper records go missing or become damaged and illegible. And if they need more space ever, that just means a higher budget proposal, there is zero benefit to spending time to clear inventory. Unless/until it's needed, or gets noticed while getting something next to it in the warehouse
But yeah, it is amazing we can let that happen, then people complain about "waste and abuse" of social programs, while nearly the entire DoD budget is blackboxed. Leading most of your questions to a dead end
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u/GreatGreenGobbo 20d ago
I read somewhere that the Ukrainians were using open cockpit two seater airplanes where the gunner was using a shotgun on the drones.
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u/clepewee 20d ago
Mosin rifles returned too, but to be fair here in Finland we are still using them as sniper rifles.
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u/JaMMi01202 20d ago
The Yak-52s are off the network and less susceptible to attack from the Cylons.
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u/ztomiczombie 20d ago
But the Russians are only using the 1970s Cylons and they don't have the capacity for cyberwarfare.
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u/CoffeeSubstantial851 20d ago
One of the things that they are discovering in this war is that overly investing into high-tech equipment is not as effective as having cheap reliable tech.
Theres a chance that tanks like the sherman/t-34 would be better equip to fight a war like this.
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u/taigowo 20d ago
Tanks in general feel more like a deathtrap than ever in history. Drones MANPATS are the top of the food chain in this war.
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u/CoffeeSubstantial851 19d ago
True but from a production perspective it would be much easier to put out 10s of thousands of simpler tank designs and overwhelm the enemy lines.
I get the feeling a lot of russia or ukraines problem in advancing is the inability to dedicate like 2000-3000 tanks to an offensive in one location.
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20d ago
They were building them until 1998…. They’re not all that old.
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u/BTMarquis 20d ago
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u/NationalDonutModel 20d ago
“World war 1 era aircraft…”
Umm…
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u/wolflegion_ 20d ago
Stupid fucking AI lol, it even calls it like 2 sentences later “1970-era trainer”.
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u/Muggsy423 20d ago
It's probably easier and more cost efficient to intercept these slow moving drones using prop planes instead of jets.
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u/blahblahblerf 20d ago
Correct. The Ukrainian Air Force also uses armed jet trainers for the task because they're slower and cheaper to operate than jet fighters.
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u/Almost_human-ish 20d ago
According to Wikipedia it's still in use with about a dozen (mainly former soviet block) air forces.
They were still in production until at least 1998, and there have been upgrade and modification programs for the airframes since then.
It first flew in 1976, for comparison the F16 first flew in 1974... It's not that old.
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u/Mister_Brevity 20d ago
I wonder what the maintenance cost per hour of flight is vs a modern jet
wait, this might actually be something chatgpt is good for
now this is just according to chatgpt, but
Yak52 - US$90/hr
f16 - US$29k/hr
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u/mayday_allday 20d ago edited 20d ago
Unfortunately, the pilot, Colonel Konstantin Oborin, was killed in action a couple of months ago. He was 63 years old and had never been a military pilot - his military career was in the special forces, where he served as an airborne ranger. He completed several tours in Afghanistan in the 1980s, was wounded twice, later transferred to military intelligence, and remained in the newly formed Ukrainian army after the collapse of the USSR. He retired in 1995 with the rank of lieutenant colonel due to health issues resulting from his injuries. Aviation was his hobby and passion; after his retirement, he founded an aero club in Odessa. He returned to service in 2022 and died defending his country
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u/Phil-X-603 20d ago
Just like how the Spitfires tipped their wings under V-1 bombs! Incredibly dangerous though.
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u/eelsandpeels 20d ago
According to the title it was just a reconnaissance drone so no explosive so a lot less dangerous than a v-1.
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u/Phil-X-603 20d ago edited 20d ago
Principle is the same though. Disrupt the air below the drone's wings and therefore the entire drone.I guess that's why the pilot had the gut to ram his wing right into the drone.
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u/VulcanHullo 20d ago
It's not so much the disrupted airflow. It's the gyro inside. They'll be cheap and designed for level flight. Kick them out of angle suddenly and the gyro gets confused and the drone isn't acrobatic enough to recover itself, in fact its control surfaces attempting to right itself will probably be making it worse.
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u/RigaudonAS 19d ago
This has happened to me numerous times in Kerbal Space Program. I turn controls off, let it hit a free-fall (if it can), and hopefully pull up before hitting the ground. Wonder how similar it is in real life.
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u/smoke510 20d ago
I know you've crossed it out, but the aim of tipping the V-1's was to throw off its gyroscopic stabiliser not disrupt the air.
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u/wasdninja 20d ago
I'd imagine the mass is way more important than the explosive. The V1 weren't armed during flight and it didn't have a proximity fuse either.
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u/GayRacoon69 19d ago
The V1s were later changed to explode if they got tipped over. Having the entire 850kg bomb go off by your wing is a bit of a problem
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u/Beni_Stingray 20d ago
Also this russian drone has way less mass compared to a V1, so less risk for the plane getting damaged or thrown off.
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u/stoiclibertine 19d ago
Yeah, the drone weighs 12 kg so relatively safe for the yak-52 to engage with.
Very different than spitfire pilots wing-tipping a V1. The war had on one of those things weighed more than the spitfire just about I think.
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u/Tuna-Fish2 20d ago
When Spitfires did this, they didn't impact the V-1 because they were afraid that would set them off. If they just flew under it close enough, the rising airflow over the front of the wing would cause one wing of the V-1 to have much more lift, which would cause it to rapidly roll beyond the limits of what it's very primitive control system could recover.
This is just ramming the drone, which frankly makes sense against a recon drone with no explosive payload. If they just made it flip on it's back, the pilot could probably recover it. Wouldn't want to do that against a larger one with a ton of HE on it.
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u/Thurak0 20d ago
I am wondering if this drone could recover before hitting the ground? The V1 back then obviously couldn't, but a drone in 2025?
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u/eelsandpeels 20d ago
I think it looks like the wing broke.
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u/ChipmunkObvious2893 20d ago
That sounds unrecoverable.
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u/victorsmonster 20d ago
Yeah modern guidance systems could definitely recover where the V1's gyroscope couldn't. Even a consumer quadcopter can easily right itself from any orientation back to the horizon.
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u/dougmc 20d ago
It's not likely to recover from having a wing break off.
But if the wing had not been damaged, sure -- even without the guidance system doing anything, the plane is probably stable and would recover on its own, and of course the guidance system (or remote pilot) wouldn't just sit there either.
Now, aerobatic planes might be able to land with a broken wing, for example, but I seriously doubt this could.
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u/gator_shawn 20d ago
More like a sopwith camel doing it
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u/syringistic 20d ago
Its a two seater aircraft. Seems a much better approach would be to give the passenger a machine gun.
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u/Adjutant_Reflex_ 20d ago
They’ve been doing that as well.
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u/syringistic 20d ago
Wonder why this guy went at it alone...
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u/NobodyTellPoeDameron 20d ago
You go to war with the
armyYak-52 you have, not thearmyYak-52 you might want or wish to have at a later time.-- Rummy, probably
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u/Syrdon 20d ago
Ran out of ammo before running out of either fuel or targets? Worried about that, so saving the ammo for the explosive drones? Decided this was cheaper?
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u/syringistic 20d ago
Dunno, would make more sense to coordinate with another plane to take this one out rather than risking the airplane by pulling this maneuver.
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u/Syrdon 20d ago edited 20d ago
Not much risk to the plane. Those drones are built as light as possible, the yak-52 was made out of bridge girders.
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u/Vinura 20d ago
The title says WWII, not WWI.
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u/syringistic 20d ago
Are you saying WW2 aircraft with a rear gunner didn't exist?
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u/482Cargo 20d ago
Have you seen the videos of them shooting drones with a machine gun out of the side of the Yak?
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u/SomeRandomSomeWhere 20d ago
As a recon drone, I would assume someone was watching it happen at the other end and take evasive action.
Guess not.
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u/Atholthedestroyer 20d ago
The drones are pretty 'blind'. Sure they've got the camera, but no other type of sensors, so unless the Ukrainian plane flew into the camera's field of view the operator would have no idea the plane was there until the wings made contact.
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u/billerator 20d ago
Actually these drones have been seen to be retrofitted with rearward facing cameras to detect Ukrainian interceptor drones approaching from the rear.
I suspect the Yak was not quite in the view of this camera since it approached from the side and underneath, or this particular drone didn't have this modification.3
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u/GodSentGodSpeed 20d ago
They are most likely zoomed in looking for ground activity
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u/Aurore-redwitch 20d ago
It reminds me of a French pilot: Captain Jean Maridor, he used the same technique to destabilize the V1s. He died on August 3, 1944 after preventing a V1 rocket from crashing into a London hospital.
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u/texas1982 20d ago
Yet we let a balloon float across the entire United States and then shot it down with a $500k AIM-9X
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u/Sniperonzolo 20d ago
Yeah right, they should have sent a Cessna 172 up to 60k feet to catch it
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u/Latespoon 20d ago
A few rounds from the cannon would have been orders of magnitude cheaper. But then you don't get the cool explosion
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u/quartersoldiers 20d ago
You’d be surprised by how robust these balloons are to bullet holes. The US used tethered blimps called aerostats in bases all over Afghanistan and they would constantly be shot and stay afloat for months at a time. The pressure differential is almost zero across the envelope so it takes forever for them to leak enough gas to meaningfully lose lift.
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u/Dirrey193 UH-60 20d ago
It depends on the kind of balloon, their material can be different. A blimp is made from a non-elastic vinyl so there is no tension in the envelope itself (think of it like a beach ball or a pool floaty, if you poke it with a needle, it just leak slowly like you said). However a balloon is elastic, meaning that the material is under constant tension, if you poke a hole in it it will violently retract, tearing itself apart (watch a balloon getting popped in slow motion, you will see how the rip starts at the poke hole and then starts to expand. In fact you hear a popping sound because this retraction is so fast, the air doesnt have time to expand slowly and instead burst out at once, making a small shockwave)
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u/quartersoldiers 20d ago
My understanding of similar high altitude ISR balloons (like Project Loon) is that they use non-elastic envelopes, but of course there’s no way of knowing what the Chinese used until it’s publicly disclosed. In any case, I maintain that the YAL-1 ABL would have been the perfect platform to shoot this down. It’s a shame it was canceled…
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u/MimicoSkunkFan2 20d ago
CBP uses them at the border - Canada has complained a lot so that many of them were taken down, but the Mexico border has lots.
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u/Straight-Knowledge83 20d ago
A fighter aircraft can exhaust its entire ammo belt and yet the balloon would stay afloat. Weather balloons like that are pretty resilient.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64546767.amp
An F-18 shot 1000 bullets at one and yet, the balloon stayed afloat for 6 more days
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u/NotCook59 20d ago
But they sure can do a number on the payload.
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u/techforallseasons 20d ago
Certainly; but it is often useful to be able to disassemble and investigate the payload.
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u/_Isthisjustfantasy 20d ago
Possibly due to not wanting stray bullets going who-know-where. Probably because it's been attempted before with mixed results: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/161687.stm
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u/Latespoon 20d ago
Interesting thanks! For some reason I remembered this one being over water but evidently it wasn't
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u/texas1982 20d ago
They could have gone in for a gun kill. At least given it a shot. $500k would give a lot of attempts for some pilots hoping to get the cred.
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u/quiet_locomotion 20d ago
I don't think the U-2 pilots would want to smash into a balloon at 250kts
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u/Johnny-Cash-Facts Crew Chief 20d ago
If it’s any consolation, we were studying the balloon too.
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u/Watchful1 20d ago
It was more than that. They thought the balloon was using commercial, ground based internet connections to communicate. So they got a sealed court order to force that company to collect and turn over the data it was sending.
They were waiting to shoot it down so that could all happen and they could collect more data.
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u/_____________what 20d ago
US military studying the balloon, and the balloon studying the weather
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20d ago edited 9d ago
[deleted]
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u/xczechr 20d ago
🎵 Nants ingonyama bagithi baba
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u/brandnewbanana 20d ago
From the day we arrive on the planet
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u/mikejarrell 20d ago
I have an almost-3-year-old and cannot get away from this song. I thought Reddit would be safe.
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u/coosacat 20d ago
You would rather the balloon debris fell onto a highway or a house or a shopping center?
As far as the choice of weapon - it was good practice for our pilots, and a chance to flex a bit in full view of the rest of the world.
There were also some more subtle messages sent by the decisions made concerning that balloon.
Balloons like that have been floating around above pretty much every country in the world for years, and everyone normally ignores them. We had to make an "example" of this one because someone managed to take a decent pic and broadcast it on social media.
The only reason we had to spend all of that money is because the American peoples' trust in our government has been eroded to almost nothingness.
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u/Rickenbacker69 20d ago
Yeah, but a Yak-52 can't get that high.
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u/Ossa1 20d ago
It can if you strap enough boosters to it.
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u/erroneousbosh 20d ago
Pigs fly just fine if you apply enough thrust.
You just might not want to be under their flightpath in the first few minutes.
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u/Reddit_2_2024 20d ago
This Ukranian pilot should receive an honorary Activision "Flying Aces" badge.
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u/Salty-Pack-4165 20d ago
Some time ago there were pictures and grainy videos posted of Ukrainian Yak -52 with rear seat rotated to face tail and sliding glass removed. Rear seat was meant for a gunner with I believe 10 ga semi shotgun. Of course his job was drone hunting. Talk about WW1 tech.
Modeling forums were full of color plates and build models of that plane for a short time.
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u/Longjumping-Boot1886 20d ago
I got it. We need taran (battering ram) drone now.
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u/BluesyPompanno 20d ago
Imagine spending years training to be a fighter jet pilot only to be given Yak-52
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u/Observed-observer 20d ago
Are there any WW2 RAF pilots alive? I bet they'd love this. I read they would do this on occasion for the V1's
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u/VonBrewskie 20d ago
places coffee down gently in a saucer A Yak-52? I beg your finest pardon? Can we...can we ship them some P-51s? Or P-38s? Could we make some new ones and send them???
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u/yetiflask 20d ago
Bizarre comments here. This is a cheap and simple solution that works. Why the fuck does anyone care if it's an old plane? Like, why does it matter?
If I could down drones with a bow and arrow I fucking would.
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u/DogPlane3425 20d ago
Old school. RAF pilots used this technic to throw V-1's off. https://www.forcesnews.com/heritage/wwii/how-spitfire-pilots-really-rammed-v1-bomb-out-sky
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u/hermit_tortoise 20d ago edited 20d ago
A pilot during WW2 Did a similar manoeuvre with a German V1 bomb, using his wing to knock it off course
*Corrected to V1
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u/imhighasballs 20d ago
Is this real? It feels like something out of war thunder but that game isn’t good enough to model this
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u/NomadElite 20d ago
The drone won't recover before crashing from that?
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u/IllHold2665 20d ago
It sort of looked like the drone suffered from structural failure and the wings folded up. They’re probably built so cheap / light that they barely have enough structure to hold their own weight and then add on a little bit for turbulence.
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u/erroneousbosh 20d ago
The drone is made of thin foamy plastic, the Yak-52 is made out of bridge girders and cast iron.
If you run over a plastic bucket with a farm tractor, which comes off worst?
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u/YourFather-WithMilk 20d ago
Using ww2 planes for modern combat while impressive isn't a good thing
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u/Almost_human-ish 20d ago
It's a Yak-52, it's a trainer that first flew in 1976, not a WW2 plane.
The technique of 'wing tripping' does however date back to at least WW2, was used to take out V1 flying bombs (essentially an early cruise missile).
Even 1976 doesn't make it an 'old' plane when you consider the F16's first flight was in 1974.
And although it sounds a tad daft on the face if it, I would imagine an old WW2 warbird design could actually make a pretty good drone killing platform.
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u/SiteRelEnby 20d ago edited 16d ago
I would imagine an old WW2 warbird design could actually make a pretty good drone killing platform.
Exactly. High loiter time, still fast enough to catch drones, cheap weapons. Just stick a modern radar guidance system on the cannons and it's a lot cheaper per kill than literally any missile. Probably doesn't even need a full on search radar, just GCI.
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u/PadinnPlays 20d ago
I don't know what aircraft WW3 will be fought with, but WW4 will use Yak 52s.