Designed by Alexander Yakovlev, the Yak series of fighters would be the crowning achievement of Soviet World War II aviation built in greater numbers than any other Soviet fighter and able to even outperform many of Germany's finest in the skies over the Eastern Front during the later years of the war. The Yakovlev Yak-1 was one of the original trio of modern Soviet fighters along with the LaGG-3 and MiG-3 and was widely considered to be the best of the three. Lightweight, extremely maneuverable and serviceable, the Yak-1 was not up to par with with the latest Luftwaffe fighters but the overall design was very reliable and easy to adapt. They were also easily constructed thanks to fabric-covered steel tube frames and wooden wings; testimony to this was the fact that production was only disrupted by 6 weeks when its main factory was relocated after the Germans invaded. Yak-1s were under production well into 1943 until replaced by the Yak-3/7/9 and were used by Polish and French pilots on the Eastern Front.

First flown in March 1939 as the I-26, the aircraft was judged an immediate success and entered production just a few months later as the Yak-1 which featured either M-105P or M-105PF engines. Various experimental aircraft based on the Yak-1 included the I-28 with a smaller wingspan and the I-30 with metal wings, some others were fitted with M-106 engines (which had been initially expected to equip the aircraft) but these caused reliability issues. The Yak-1 design was later modified into the lightweight experimental Yak-1M which would be the basis for the subsequent Yak-3.