Early Yak fighters did indeed use compressed-air (pneumatic) actuators for landing gear, flaps, and brakes; that’s in the tech manuals (like the one you posted) and is mentioned in contemporary accounts. The pneumatic system was primarily chosen to save weight, as you said.
However guns weren’t pneumatic on the Yak series brah. You’re confusing the firing system with the recharging system. For most Yak’s (1,3, 7 and 9 (except the 1b, I think)) guns were fired electrically, just like most other planes of its time. The pneumatic system was only used to clear jams. Even if that system was shot out, the guns would still work perfectly unless they jammed. (To which we don’t even have an in-flight jamming clearing mechanic in-game lel)
That said, the claim:
Is too simplistic. Hydraulics have their own failure modes (fast oil loss, flammability as said by Cloudzy26160 ). Yeees, Yaks are more susceptible in some damage scenarios, but it’s not an instant, universal death sentence, the plane won’t just “wibbly wobble and die” if a line is hit brah :D
How about we just make wooden parts of aircraft more vulnerable to blast damage, like it abound be, and make it so that explosive shells don’t just fly through a Yak without exploding in impact?
Problem solved.
Yaks and La-5/7s are literally cheating at the moment when it comes to dealing damage to them with explosive rounds.
Also the Mosquito, but thats a single plane that hardly anyone plays.
The plywood and fabric composition on the Yaks is realistically thin enough that 20mm rounds usually don’t go off in the wing areas, since they don’t hit anything thick enough to trigger them (i.e hydraulics); which matches how the 20mm rounds used in WW2 actually worked since they were mostly designed to damage internal components and structures after penetrating the skin, rather than on impact. Plus, almost everything else people were flying used duralumin instead of the weak, crumbly laminated wood and canvas skin the Soviets put on their planes.
That’s why Yaks in-game can take a ton of hits and keep flying, but their aerodynamics suffer while doing so. 15mm rounds, however, will still explode on impact, and if 20mms do, in fact, hit a hydraulic they will either blow the wing off (because usually one bullet comes after the other) or black-out the entire section ;D
It should be noted that the majority of wartime LaGG and Yak aircraft were made with “Delta wood composite” which is a kind of resin (phenol- or cresol-formaldehyde resin) impregnated and heat treated wood composite material. It’s heavy, but very strong when compared to plain wood construction (De Haviland Mosquito) However, this strength came with another set of drawbacks; the material is dense, tends to shatter when shot at and does not like blast pressure damage.
In-game the high explosive ammo should trigger when hitting wing and fuselage surfaces made of “Delta Wood”.
Whilst i agree that loss of hydraulic or pneumatic pressure is not modeled - i am not sure if you mix up too low BRs with “dominating anything”.
I totally agree that the Yak 1, 3, 7, 9 family is not correctly positioned since the ShVak buff but the Yaks at lower BRs lose every dogfight against their opponents if used correctly.
A Yak-1B has zero chance vs a 109 E-4/7 or a B-239 in an isolated 1 vs 1 at any alt. The new Swiss C-3604 kills any Yak (including the 3.7 Yak-9M) in a turnfight. The key is to deny any kind of head-on and to make them turning. Even a 3.3 Hellcat beats a 4.3 Yak-3 in a turnfight, just avoid vertical maneuvers and ensure at least energy parity at the start of the fight.
Things gets more difficult at higher BRs - and end up with a real challenge with the three 5.7 versions - if your are not in a JP or UK plane they are quite nasty opponents.
My main critic of these aircraft is their way too high damage resistance - if you score 11 hits on a Yak-3 with a 12,7 mm HMG i expect them to go down - currently they tank way too many hits.
True, but the damage model needs to account for the thicker wooden sections between fabric-only voids, because those make fuze activation easier. It’s similar to how in top tier they’re adding more breakable modules, except this would raise vulnerability by making areas denser instead.
Let’s also not forget the ongoing high-explosive bug as well ;)