In the late 1940s the Soviet forces had a need for a light liaison aircraft that was smaller than the
Antonov An-2. The company derived two four-seat aircraft with wooden wings and metal fuselages, from the earlier
AIR-6. The Yak-10, a high-wing strut-braced monoplane with fixed landing gear and the Yak-13 a low-wing cantilever monoplane with a manually retractable landing gear. Both aircraft were powered by a 145 hp
M-11MF radial engine. After tests in 1945, the Yak-10 was awarded a production contract for 40 aircraft, despite unimpressive performance. The company built a number of different variants but soon produced an improved design, the
Yak-12, which, although of similar layout, was not a derivative of the Yak-10. The Yak-10 only entered limited production before it was replaced by the superior
Yakovlev Yak-12, and although the
Yak-13 proved to be superior to the original Yak-10, production was not carried out. ==Variants==