Yakovlev’s designers used the fuselage of the war-proven Yak-3 piston-engine fighter as a base for designing their first jet-powered model, the Yak-15, which was further developed into the Yak-17, while the Yak-23 was the last representative of the family line, retaining the keel airframe layout, but with a much more powerful engine for a sharply increased performance. It, in fact, developed to perfection Yakovlev’s ‘trademark’ concept of a lightweight, fast, reasonably-armed and highly-agile fighter, but there were no further reserves for future performance enhancements. In the early 1950s, the Yak-23 was considered to be an obsolete yet simple fighter in terms of systems and demonstrated pretty good reliability in Bulgarian service, able to be flown effectively and safely by relatively young and inexperienced pilots.