a —) RUSSIAN AIRCRAFTMikoyan MiG-24 © 2008 lan Alan Publishing SBN 9781 057802573 rubles by Midland Publishing 4 Wating Orv, Hinckiey, LE10 SEY. Englans Te! 01455 254 490 Fax: 01455 254 495 matt milendbook=@compuserve.com Midland Pubishing isan imprint of lan Allan Pubishing Lic Wortawide distribution (except Noah America): Migland Counties Publications 4 Wating Orve, Hinosey, LE10 EY, Englana Tolophone: 01498 288 450 Fax: 01455.258 757 mat nfo@milandcountios.com ‘rma idiandcounvessupersiore.com Nox American vade dstiton: Specially Press Publishers & Wholesalers inc 139965 Grand Avenue, North Branch, MIN 55058 Tels 65 277 1400. Fax: 654 277 1208 Tal re telephone: 200 885 4585, ‘ov spociaypross.com This books tustvatod wth photos by RSKMIG, tho Myasishchev ENZ, TSAGI,ITAR-TASS, Yetim Gordon, Sergey Burn, Vicor Drushlyakow, V.P. Kunyayey, ya Morozov, G. Ome chuk, Sergey Popsuyevch Seherbacevich, the ate Sergey Shrynnikoy, the late Boris \aovenko: Et Systems, IA, Xba, Serge Batoussov, Marin Baumann, Rocky de Coume, Peter Davison, MR! Deca, Ere Dewhurst, Ken Duty, Fonen Exketeln, Marcus Fulber, Graré Gaucin, tev Grass, Waoaw Hoye, Ferdinand C. W. Kéemann Jan Koubs, Calo Kut Jy Laukkanen, Crs Loting, Lon Nerdoen, Martin Novak, Lindsay Peacock, Andrzej Roguck, Robert J Fue, E- Schmit, Jarosiaw Sobocikl, Marinus D. Tabak, Simon To, Or. Istvan Toperzer, Alexandru Trandati, {AJ Walp, Helmit Walther, Simon Watson as walla rom ‘he Rusia Contal Archive ol he National Ecanemy (TeGANKIy, he arctwes athe Russian Ar Feree 70) Stato Fight Test Genre, te Bamau tary Plot College (BWVAUD, the Mina M, Gromoy Fight Researehinettuto (Up, Yotm Gorcen, VadimirN. Kandaurov, Sergey & ity Komissarov, LK. Kuganyok, Sargey Popsuyevich, an LPatygo, ¥.V. Sharkov, Segey Tevet, Yehuda Boro, Pushpindar Singh Chopra, Lastlo Sz, the Indian Ar Fotce, the US Air Force, Wojskowa Agencia Fotograiczna, FART, Chinese Miary Aviation, Jane's Al the Wore’ Arora, Ar Float, Koy PubonngiAi Forces ‘Morty, LétoctrKosmonautika, wew.a¥aphot0u, ‘eral 126.6om, we bharat aka com, ‘wwe concontie.nak. ww DelonoeTak.com, wi MIG: 2d, wa nico, ww PakstaniDevence com, ‘wwe sinodefence.com, wu siempages.co°, ‘wiv topBt com and other Ilemetsovtees Line crawengs by Andrey Yurgenson, the late lacie Kimov, Poygon Press and Wyacresiav Kondrat yo Colour anwork by Andrey Yurgonson, Sergoy lana yo, the late Sergey Yorshov, Valin Veliki, Mra Bykov, Manfred Meyer and Wojtek Sarkowshi Printed in Engine! by tan Alan Printing Lic Fiverdene Bushes Park, Molesey Road, Hersham, Suey, KT12 4G ‘Al ights reserved. No par of tis pubieation ay Bo {oproduced, stored in a rereval system ranemited In ‘any fom or by any means, electronic. ‘mechanical or photocopied, recorded or oberuise, ‘without the weten pecmission ofthe pubishers Contents Introduction . 3 Part 1. THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY ......7 Part 2. OFF TO A FINE START . 55 Part 3. THE INTERCEPTORS: -- 93 Part 4. MASS PRODUCTION 127 Part 5. THE TRAINERS... -193 Part 6, EXPERIMENTS AND PROJECTS . 213 Part 7. BEYOND THE GREAT WALL ..... 249 Part 8. IN SOVIET AIR FORCE SERVICE . 341 Part 9. MIG-21 ATWAR................959 Part 10. FACE TO FACE WITH THE ADVERSARY ..... +403 Part 11. THE MIG-21 IN DETAIL........411 Part 12, MIG-21 OPERATORS . -453 Acknowledgements ‘The authors wish to thank Angela Dexter, Alexander Boyd, Michal Ovéaéik, Robart Ruffle, Bob Ogden, Piotr Butowsk! and van Rociono for ther assistance and consultations. Special thanks go to Yuriy F. Polushkin who assisted in charting the MiG-21’s development history; Marcus Falber, Detlev Grass, Manfred Meyer and Chris Loting, who ‘supplied valuable photos; Simon Watson who provided photos of Indian MiG-21s; Jyrk Laukkanen who provided [photos of Finnish MiG-218; Ferencant Vaida who provided information on Hungarien and other MiG-21s for Chapter 412; Pushpindar Singh Chopra who provided information on MIG-21 operations in India; Nigel Eastaway who kinaly provided access tothe RART database; and, last but not least, Dmitiy 8. Komissarov, Sergey D. Komissarov and ‘Yeugeniy Ozhegow who translated most of the chapters. This book relies on unclassified sources (books and magazines published in Russia, the UK and the USA).Introduction Aircraft and people both have a fate, happy or otherwise. An aircraft is bor under a lucky star when itis created at the right time, when it is mass-produced and needed both at home and abroad. Setting worid records is also a measure ofahappy fate, butan aircraft can be considered especially lucky when it sets records in terms of production figures. The Mikoyan/Gurevich MiG-2 is one of the most successful tactical fighters developed in the Soviet Union. The aircraft was built in a mutttude of versions, forming the backbone of the fighter fleet of nearly 50 nations for many years. Apart from the MiG-21's Chinese derivatives, the fighter had a production run of more than 12,000; more than 5,000 copies were exported. Insome nations the MiG-21 remains in service to this day. Yet the MiG-21's long life was far from cloudless as far as both the development history ‘and the combat career are concerned. Jt fighter development in the Soviet Union began immediately after the Second World War, and the initial straight-wing designs were quickly superseded by fighters with swept wings. However, these aircraft had wings with 35° sweepback, which allowed them to approach the speed of sound (albett success- {ully) but notto exceed it, Furthermore, when the ‘OKB-155 design bureau headed by Aryom Ivanovich Mikoyan and Mikhail losifovich Gurevich brought out its first swapt-wing fighter, the 310 (which became famous as the MiG-15; NATO reporting name Fagot), several new and unpleasant phenomena came to light. One of these was a tendency to drop a wing (thatis, roll uncommandedly) at high speeds, called val'ozhka in Russian; it was caused by aerodynamic imperfections (due to insuff- ciently high manufacturing standards) and by the wings’ aeroelasticty (resulting from the ‘wings’ insufficient torsional. stiffness). The va'ozhka was especially pronounced at the fighter’s. maximum speed (Mach 0.92-0.93) when aileron authority was reduced, compli- cating roll control. (OKB = opytno-konstrook- torskoye byuro — experimental design bureau; the number is a code allocated for security reasons.) Furthermore, as progressively more pow- erful jet engines were developed, the problem of breaking the sound barrier arose. This required additional research in the field of supersonic flight aerodynamics. The task of emulating a supersonic airiow in a wind tunnel turned out to be a highly complex one. Within 12 months the Central Aero: & Hydrodynamics Research Institute named after Nikolay Ye. Zhukovskiy (TsAGI — Tsentrahi'nyy aero ghidrodinami- cheskiy institoot) designed and built the T-112 intermittent wind tunnel with a throat measuring 0.60.6 m (1 ft 11%in x 1 ft 11% in). AS early as 1947 the institute undertook the frst wind tunnel tests at speeds equivalent to Mach 0.8+1.7 in the 112. TSAG''s aerodynamicists established that increasing the wing sweep to 45° made it possible to exceed Mach 1 safely without incurring excessive wave drag: the best results, however, were obtained with wings swept back 55° With TSAGI's assistance, in 1948-1950 the ‘Soviet design bureaux brought out a number of fighter prototypes with wings swept back 45°. ‘One of these, the La-176 developed by OKB-301 under Semyon A. Lavochkin, became the first Soviet fighter to crack Mach 1 in a shallow dive in January 1949. After extensive wind tunnel research and careful analysis of all associated stability and structural strength issues, in 1949-1950 TSAGI worked out a set of recommendations. Taking these into account, the Mikoyan OKB created the SM-2— the first Soviet true supersonic fighter (known in production form as the MiG-19; NATOYetm Gordon erctive Avery provisional model featuring a talled-detta layout in 12 supersonic wind reporting name Farmer}, which attained Mach 1.36 in level fight. Yet, new problems cropped upas the MiG-19 was being designed. Firstly, at supersonic speeds the need arose to slow down the airflow in the engines’ inlet ducts to subsonic speed with minimum losses, as jet ‘engines cannot run in a supersonic airflow. Hence the designers and scientists teamed up to develop a special air intake design for supersonic aircraft. Secondly, the sharply ‘swept wings (the MiG-19's wing sweep was 55°) made it harder to rotain adequate lateral stability at high angles of attack (AOAS). Given the technology of the day, for flight safety reasons it was necessary to make the aircraft statically stable in the longitudinal control channel throughout the speed envelope. Research undertaken by TsAGI showed that this could only be attained by carefully choosing the position of the horizontal tall with respect to the wings and placing it close to the wing plane. Another major problem lay in the dramatic reduction of elevator authority at supersonic speeds; this prompted a switch from traditional stabilisers with inset elevators to all-movable stabilisers (stabilators). The introduction of afterbumning turbojet engines made it possible to attain fairly high supersonic speeds. By then TsAGI had amassed the research results necessary to attain such speeds in practice. The first issue that had to be resolved was the choice of wing type. Sharply swept wings (55-60°) wore the most advanced type at the time; research revealed that such wings could have a fairly high thickness/chord ratio and a fairly high aspect ratio, providing adequate strength and stitiness. Unswept wings optimised for super- sonic fight were required to have a sharp leading edge, which was detrimental to the aircraft's agility; TsAGI deemed this type of wings unsuitable for tactical aircraft. In the opinion of TSAGI's experts, the development land mass production of the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter designed by Clarence ‘Kelly’ Johnson and featuring unswept low aspect ratio wings was a big blunder - a view sub- stantiated by the F-104’s high accident rate, The renowned Soviet aerodynamicist Pyotr P. Krasil'shchikov, who worked at TsAGI, Conducted detailed research of delta wings with different degrees of leading-edge sweep. Theoretical research indicated that the wing leading edge had to be subsonic in order to reduce the wave drag and obtain acceptable aerodynamic parametersin general. To this end, an aircraft designed for a cruising speed of Mach 2.0 had to have 60° leading-edge sweep; this ‘made it possible to use an airfoil with a rounded leading edge and a relatively high thickness/chord ratio (around 5%). Such wings Would ensure sufficient manoeuvrability and acceptable performance in take-off and landing modes combined with sufficient structural strength and rigidity. Krasi’shchikov's ideas were wellfounded and substantiated by a lot of research; the research on delta wings which his team undertook at TsAGI from 1953 onwards. proved extremely fruitful Two of the Soviet Union's leading “fighter makers’ - OKB-155 and Pavel 0. Sukhoi's OKB- 51 - analysed the relative merits and Weaknesses of swept and delta wings at great length. Thanks to the research done by TsAGI ‘both options (which were recommended by the Institute) were quite practicable; it was up to the aircraft designers to take their pick. Paradoxically, however, the designers could not ‘make the final choice without testing both types of wings in actual flight Thus, both OKBs decided to build fighter prototypes with swept and delta wings (in other words, diflering only in wing type) for comparative tests, TsAGI's recommendations concerning the fighter’s general arrangement, stability, controllability, structural strength and aero- elasticity featured all of the future aircraft's approximate basic dimensions and other data. The institute unambiguously recommended using conventional tail surfaces (in other words, the delta-wing version would be a tailed-delta