Establishing an OKB (Experimental Construction Bureau) in the autumn of 1938, Vladimir P Yatsenko was ordered to build two prototypes of a single-seat fighter which he had designed while supervising production of the Kocherigin DI-6. Assigned the designation I-28 by the NKAP (State Commissariat for Aviation Industry), the fighter was a low-wing cantilever monoplane of mixed construction, with a two-spar wooden wing, a steel-tube forward fuselage and a wooden semi-monocoque aft fuselage, the whole being covered by birch shpon - impregnated birch strips glued across the grain. The wing was of shallow inverted-gull form and armament consisted of two 20mm ShVAK cannon and two 7.62mm ShKAS machine guns, all synchronised and firing through the engine cowling lip. The I-28 was to have been powered by a 1,500hp Shvetsov M-9018-cylinder radial engine, but the non-availability of this power plant led to adoption of the 14-cylinder Tumansky M-87 affording only 930hp. Completed on 30 April 1939, and flown shortly afterwards, the first prototype was submitted to the NIl V-VS for State Acceptance testing in June, but broke up in a terminal velocity dive. The second prototype, completed in August 1939, differed in having a marginally more powerful M-87B engine and an armament of one ShVAK cannon and two 12.7mm UBS machine guns. This prototype lacked the aft-sliding cockpit canopy of the first aircraft. Production of a pre-series of I-28 fighters powered by the 1,100hp Tumansky M-88B engine had meanwhile commenced, but only five had been completed by February 1940, when the programme was terminated and Yatsenko's GAZ transferred to the Yakovlev OKB, the I-28 designation being re-used by the NKAP for a Yakovlev fighter.

3-View

A three-view drawing (1610 x 1190)