In April 1946, the Council of People's Commissars ordered several design bureaux (OKB Russian: Опытное конструкторское бюро – Opytnoye Konstruktorskoye Buro), included that of Alexander Yakovlev, to develop a single-seat jet fighter to be equipped with a single Lyulka TR-1 turbojet engine.

Yakovlev and his team were well aware that any derivative of their earlier Yak-15 and Yak-17 fighters, then under development, could not reach the required speed because of their thick wings and chose to begin a "clean-slate" design.

Preliminary work used the same "pod-and-boom" layout as had been used in the earlier Yakovlev designs, although the cockpit was located in front of the engine.

[2] By late June, Yakovlev had decided to use a more aerodynamically efficient "tubular" layout with the engine buried in the center of the fuselage.

[3] The Yak-19 had a flattened oval-shaped, metal semi-monocoque fuselage with the single-seat cockpit and its teardrop-shaped canopy positioned just forward of the 1,100 kgf (11 kN; 2,400 lbf) axial-flow RD-10F turbojet engine.

The rudder was split into two sections by the horizontal stabilizers; the upper portion was fabric-covered while the lower half was metal-skinned.

The group of military test pilots concluded that the afterburner was unreliable and the aircraft was difficult to control in roll.

Rather than modify the aircraft to address these problems, Yakovlev chose to cancel it entirely in favor of designs using the more-powerful (1,500 kgf (15 kN; 3,300 lbf)) Rolls-Royce Derwent-derived Klimov RD-500, like his Yak-23 and Yak-25 fighters then under development.