The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 (Микоян-Гуревич МиГ-15; NATO reporting name "Fagot") is a Soviet swept-wing jet fighter designed by the bureau of Artem Mikoyan and Mikhail Gurevich. It first flew on 30 December 1947, entered service in 1949 and shocked Western air forces over Korea from late 1950. More than 12,000 MiG-15s were built in some seventeen versions in the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia and China, and about 35 countries flew the type.[1][2]

The MiG-15 was also the first MiG built in Nizhny Novgorod, one of Russia's largest cities, on the Volga about 400 km east of Moscow, which was called Gorky (Горький) from 1932 to 1990. The city's Aircraft Plant No. 21, today the Sokol Aircraft Plant (авиазавод «Сокол»), rolled out its first MiG-15bis in January 1950. By the end of 1952 it had delivered, according to its own production table, 1,720 MiG-15bis fighters and 360 MiG-15Rbis reconnaissance fighters. The type began a partnership between the plant and the Mikoyan design bureau that produced the MiG-17, MiG-19, MiG-21, MiG-25 and MiG-31 in Gorky.[3][4][5] A MiG-15bis now stands in the memorial museum of the test pilot Valery Chkalov at Chkalovsk, his home town on the Volga in the Nizhny Novgorod region.[10]

Origins and design

The MiG-15 was designed in 1946 in answer to Stalin's call for a high-altitude day interceptor. It was the first Soviet jet to benefit from the British sale of Rolls-Royce Nene and Derwent engines to the Soviet Union; these were copied and developed into the RD-45 and the VK-1. The MiG-15 introduced the first production swept wing on a Russian aircraft, as well as the first pressurised cockpit and the first ejection seat. Production was authorised in March 1948, only three months after the first flight.[1]

In 1950 the Soviets began production of an improved version, the MiG-15bis, with the more powerful Klimov VK-1 engine of about 6,000 lb (2,700 kg) thrust and hydraulically boosted ailerons. It was armed with one 37 mm and two 23 mm cannon and could carry rockets or up to 2,000 lb of bombs.[2] This was the version that Gorky built.[3]

Korea and the Cold War

Late in 1950, MiG-15s flown by Soviet pilots appeared over North Korea. Armed with one 37 mm and two 23 mm cannon, they quickly drove piston-engined aircraft, including the B-29 bomber, from the sky, and the United States rushed the F-86 Sabre to Korea in response. The fighter had weaknesses too: it was not a very stable gun platform, and at high speed it tended to Dutch roll because the wing flexed and the ailerons lost effectiveness. Chinese and North Korean MiG-15s joined the Soviet ones before the war ended, and the name "MiG" became a byword for a Soviet fighter.[1]

On 21 September 1953 a defecting North Korean pilot, Senior Lieutenant No Kum-sok, landed a MiG-15bis at Kimpo Air Base in South Korea. The aircraft gave the Americans valuable intelligence, since it was the advanced version of the fighter; after flight tests the United States offered to return it to its "rightful owners", the offer was ignored, and in November 1957 the aircraft went on display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio.[2] In China the MiG-15 remained in service until 1978, and the two-seat MiG-15UTI trainer was used throughout the world.[1]

Gorky's first MiG

Aircraft Plant No. 21 was built at the turn of the 1930s on the western edge of Nizhny Novgorod, among marshes and woods between Kostarikha (Костариха) and Sormovo (Сормово), and began work on 1 February 1932. In the 1930s its chief pilot was Valery Chkalov, who tested the plant's I-16 fighters; during the Second World War it mass-produced Lavochkin fighters; and at the end of the 1940s it built 189 Lavochkin La-15 jet fighters.[4][6] In 1949 the plant began working with the Mikoyan design bureau, OKB-155, and was set the task of mastering the MiG-15 in a short time. The plant's history calls this a new stage: series production of a riveted all-metal aircraft built to fly in a new range of heights and speeds.[3][4]

In the plant's paperwork the new fighter was "type 53". The pattern for series production was MiG-15 No. 105015, built by the lead factory, Plant No. 1 in Kuibyshev (now Samara), and the shortcomings listed in the report of the Air Force state trials had to be corrected on the Gorky aircraft. The plan for 1950 was 350 aircraft of the new type, almost twice the previous year's plan for the La-15. Groups of mechanics and inspectors were sent to the Moscow area to study the VK-1 engine at its factory and the MiG-15 itself at Mikoyan's flight-test base; the pilots attended classes two hours a day, four hours on days without flying.[3]

The factory airfield had to be rebuilt for jets. In 1949 its runway was lengthened by 634 m with pierced steel plates laid on sand, to 1,914 m. It ran parallel to the Moscow Highway (Московское шоссе), and for a third of its length it was crossed by the railway to Balakhna; a new runway was later designed for the plant because the crossing was unsafe and the plates limited the weight of future aircraft.[3]

The first two MiG-15bis built in Gorky, Nos. 5321-0101 and 5321-0103, left the assembly shop for the airfield on 26 January 1950. The plant's test pilots flew them on 29 and 30 January, and the Air Force acceptance pilots on 1 and 6 February; both aircraft then went to Mikoyan's flight-test base for further trials. From 28 April 1950 fighters came out of the assembly shop without a break.[3]

The early months were hard. Engines smoked and vibrated, and in 1950 alone 35 VK-1s were rejected; 43 aircraft had to be partly dismantled on the airfield to fit a deflector ring in the jet pipe. The worst problem was wing drop (in Russian valezhka) and yaw at high speed, caused by small deviations in the shape of the wings and control surfaces. Mechanics cut and bent the trim strips on the rudders, turned the bushings of the wing attachments and sometimes replaced whole wing panels — 40 aircraft got new wings in 1951 — and from aircraft 53-0206 the plant fitted hydraulic aileron boosters. "Wing drop is the scourge of the plant," the senior Air Force representative at the factory told a conference in May 1950; because of it, he added, test flights burned five to ten times the normal amount of fuel.[3]

Output nevertheless rose quickly. The plant built 367 MiG-15bis in 1950 against a plan of 350, 928 in 1951 against 877, and 425 in 1952 against 395; daily deliveries grew from 2.1 aircraft in January 1951 to 4.4 in the last quarter of the year. In August 1951 the plant also launched the MiG-15Rbis ("type 55"), a reconnaissance fighter with an AFA-40 camera and two 600-litre underwing tanks, building 60 in 1951 and 300 in 1952. At the same time, by government order, it had to restart production of the piston-engined Lavochkin La-11, adding 100 in 1950 and 182 in 1951. Finished MiGs were painted, partly dismantled, packed and sent to the Air Force mostly by rail.[3]

Gorky also built experimental versions. The SD-5, a MiG-15bis with two pods of ARS-57 unguided rockets under the wings, was tested by the plant's pilot Alexander Popov first at the factory and then at the Air Force research institute. In July 1952 a branch of the Mikoyan bureau was set up at the plant by an order signed jointly by the plant's director, S. I. Agadzhanov, and by Artem Mikoyan; it was headed by Mikoyan's deputy P. E. Syrovoy.[3] In 1952 the MiG-15 gave way on the assembly line to the MiG-17.[3]

The test pilots

Every MiG-15 was flown before delivery by a plant test pilot and then by a pilot of the Air Force's military acceptance team at the factory. In 1950 the plant's flight group included Alexei Bolshakov, Nikolai Alifanov, Alexander Popov, Setrak Airapetov, Ivan Kulkov, Mikhail Kostyuchenko and Valentin Shamin, and in 1952 Leonid Minenko arrived; Airapetov flew the first strength tests of the Gorky MiG-15bis.[3]

Nikolai Alifanov (1912–1986) had flown I-15 fighters in China in 1937–1938 and commanded a fighter regiment in the Second World War. He tested Gorky's production aircraft from 1944 to 1965 — Lavochkins, then the MiG-15 in 1950–1952 and later the MiG-17, MiG-19 and MiG-21. He was made a Hero of the Soviet Union on 1 May 1957, the same day as his colleague Leonid Minenko, and lies in the Marina Roshcha cemetery in Nizhny Novgorod.[7][8] Valentin Shamin, who grew up in Dzerzhinsk and learned to fly at its aero club, joined the plant in 1950 and tested its MiG-15s and MiG-17s until his death in 1953.[9]

Memory

In the Chkalov Memorial Museum at Chkalovsk, the pavilion hangar next to the pilot's birthplace holds the ANT-25 of his record flights to the Far East and over the North Pole to America, the I-16 and I-17 fighters he tested, and a MiG-15bis, presented by the museum as the embodiment of Chkalov's dream of high-speed aircraft.[10]

The Sokol plant has its own museum of history, founded in 1966, with about 20,000 exhibits; full-size aircraft stand in front of its building, and the collection includes a MiG-15 alongside the La-7, MiG-17, MiG-21, MiG-25, MiG-29 and MiG-31. The museum is on the plant's territory and receives organised groups only.[11]

See also

Sources

  1. Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum — collection object "Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 (Ji-2) FAGOT B", inventory A19860066000 (archive)
  2. National Museum of the United States Air Force — fact sheet "Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15bis" (archive)
  3. testpilot.ru — Ya. A. Isaenko, N. D. Levadny, A. M. Elkinbard, Lyotchiki, ispytaniya, samolyoty ("Pilots, tests, aircraft"), history of the flight-test department of the Sokol plant, Nizhny Novgorod: NAZ Sokol, 2013; chapter "The fifties: MiG-15, MiG-17, MiG-19", pp. 99–152, including the plant's production table for 1950–1955 (in Russian) (archive)
  4. Nizhny Novgorod Aircraft Plant Sokol — "History", official website of the plant, archived copy of 26 December 2014 (in Russian)
  5. Nizhny Novgorod Aircraft Plant Sokol — "History", English version of the official website, archived copy of 16 October 2004
  6. testpilot.ru — "Plant No. 21": founding, directors and aircraft built, with numbers (in Russian) (archive)
  7. testpilot.ru — biography of Nikolai Grigoryevich Alifanov (in Russian) (archive)
  8. testpilot.ru — biography of Leonid Ivanovich Minenko (in Russian) (archive)
  9. testpilot.ru — biography of Valentin Mikhailovich Shamin (in Russian) (archive)
  10. V. P. Chkalov Memorial Museum, Chkalovsk — official website: the museum's house and pavilion hangar (in Russian) (archive)
  11. transport-nn.ru — "Museum of the Nizhny Novgorod aircraft plant", 4 August 2022 (in Russian) (archive)