As we well know, the Yak 9 is sort of useless in both iterations (YAK 9T and YAK 9K) . It has no bombs or rockets and those 30 rounds of 37mm or 29 rounds of 45mm run out very fast when dogfighting.
Now here’s the thing, these planes were not supposed to use those guns against other planes. There’s not much you can do in air to air combat against a fast moving plane with 29 or 30 rounds shot from a slow firing gun. That’s why they were also fitted with a 12.7 mm MG. You were supposed to use the 12.7 against enemy planes and the 37mm or the 45mm against…(drum roll)… TANKS.
And here we come to the crux of the matter, YES the YAK 9T and the 9K were designed as tank busters, and while they can destroy tanks, the game itself makes them suck.
Hear me out… in practice mode it’s sort of easy, you climb to 800m, you turn you plane around to nosedive to shoot the tank from above…aaaaand the game engine throws the first wrench in the works: the LOD changed and you can’t see the tanks. No problem, you zoom in and it doesn’t help much, you need to get closer, you find the tank, you shoot it and half of second later you realise you have to pull up or else you crash. No problem, the rearming point is right there, you rearm, go to 800m, turn around to shoot the tank again, you set your FOV to 50 to get a higher zoom to shoot the tank from a longer distance to force the LOD to change when you zoom in, you destroy the tank aaaaaand… you can’t fly the damn thing right because your FOV is 50.
^THIS WAS IN PRACTICE MODE.^
Now let’s talk about actual battles…
You can’t fly with FOV 50, there are enemy planes trying to shoot you down and you need to have spatial awareness. So you can’t shoot a tank from further than 500m away
Enemy tanks move and shooting a moving tank means you’ll miss more… while you only have 29 rounds
Tanks can hide under trees or behind building meaning that the window of opportunity to shoot it is smaller than in practice mode. If you can land 5-10 shots on a tank you’re lucky. It takes more than 10 shots to blow up a tank.
The rearming point is 2800m away and every 29 rounds you have to pay it a visit.
Now why would anyone use it as a tank buster if another plane that’s slower but has bombs does a better job? If it took only 5 shots from above to pop a tank so you’d actually get to use it right, then it would work as a tankbuster and players would have a reason to use it. As it stands… it sucks.
yeah the plane is dead from the start to begin with, from what I can read Yak-9k was terrible irl and unreliable and so it is on the game, Yak-9T was mainly used against ships and or light armored vehicles so I guess on the game they are just useless I guess for the lols you could use it against bombers since well that was Yak-9k purpose but aside from that is better so skip them and get a Lavochkin
Vehicles other than tanks exist too, hitting a tank with a rocket, bomb or anti tank gun is very hard, not impossible though, there are CAS aces such as Hans-Ulrich Rudel who claimed 519 tank “kills”. However those guys are the exception.
Its far more realistic to strike at a convoy which consists of slow moving lightly or not armoured vehicles possibly loaded with ammunition and explosives to the brim, those are far more realistic targets for the Yak-9K/T and Stuka G.
True, but that’s IRL. We don’t have any of those in the game so it comes down to tank busting. You could use it against bomber formations but then again 29 rounds go out fast. You’d be better off using an IL 2 type 3 or IL 10. It has 2 23mm guns with more ammo so you can chew an entire bomber formation before you need to rearm and they also have rockets and bombs for CAS.
The Yak 9 problem is tricky, they can kill tanks as long as you land enough shots on the top of the tank, but to land those shots you have to nosedive to shoot it from above. The game itself make it difficult because at 700ish meters altitude the LOD changes so you cant see the tanks on the ground. It takes a bit of time to find the target and to line up the plane so you only get a window from 500m to 200m to shoot before you need to pull up so you don’t crash. 300 m in a fast plane nosediving go out really quick so you don’t get enough shots on target.
That’s why i think that if the guns were buffed so it could actually kill a tank in that short window, the plane would actually make sense in gameplay and player would have a reason to use them.
Yes, it might not be realistic to buff the guns but then again neither is LOD change at altitude. I had the opportunity to fly with someone who has a small personal plane. At 1500m (4500 feet) you can clearly see vehicles on the ground.
yes, those are ground attack planes.
German fighters are also bad at CAS on purpose, if we buffed the Yak-9 than it would have to move to attacker plane category which would make it even more useless, you said it yourself that IL-2 is better.
What could actually help the Yak-9 is getting lower BR.