The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-17 (Микоян-Гуревич МиГ-17; NATO reporting name "Fresco") is a Soviet jet fighter developed from the MiG-15 of the Korean War. Similar in appearance to its predecessor, it had more sharply swept wings, a longer fuselage and better speed and handling. The first prototype flew in January 1950 and series production began late in 1951. The MiG-17 served in the air forces of at least 20 nations, was built in China as the J-5, and fought over Vietnam and in the Middle East.[1][2]

In Nizhny Novgorod — a large Russian city on the Volga that was called Gorky (Горький) from 1932 to 1990 — the MiG-17 was built from May 1952 to 1955 by Aircraft Plant No. 21, today the Sokol Aircraft Plant (авиазавод «Сокол»). From early 1953 Gorky was the lead factory for the type, and it became the home of its radar-equipped all-weather versions: according to the plant's production table it delivered 1,495 MiG-17s, 225 MiG-17Ps and 388 MiG-17PFs.[3] A MiG-17 raised on a pylon near the plant, in the city's Moskovsky District, has been a local landmark since 1985.[8]

From MiG-15 to MiG-17

The MiG-17 was designed to replace the MiG-15. Its wing was swept at 45 degrees instead of 35 and was about 12 per cent larger in area; the tailplane, fin, rudder and main landing gear were new, and the cockpit canopy was redesigned for a better view. It was powered first by the VK-1, a Soviet development of the British Rolls-Royce Nene, and later by the VK-1A, with the same thrust but a much longer service life.[2][3] The first operational MiG-17s appeared in 1952, but not in sufficient numbers to take part in the Korean War. Five versions were eventually produced; the MiG-17F introduced an afterburning engine, the VK-1F.[1]

In service around the world

The MiG-17 was exported widely, including to countries friendly to the United States. North Vietnam formed its first MiG-17 unit, the 921st Fighter Regiment, in February 1964 after its pilots had trained in China, and also flew Chinese-built J-5s. Over Vietnam the slower but more manoeuvrable MiG-17 met American F-105s and F-4s, whose pilots relied on their speed advantage.[1] The type also saw combat in the Middle East.[2] The MiG-17F now on display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio, was presented to the museum by the Egyptian Air Force in 1986.[1]

Built in Gorky

Gorky's Aircraft Plant No. 21 had been building MiG-15s since January 1950. The MiG-17, "type 54" in the plant's records, followed in 1952. The first Gorky MiG-17, No. 54-0101, was rolled out to the airfield on 7 May 1952, flown by a plant test pilot the next day and left the plant on 14 May; the second, No. 54-0102, flew on 24 May. Both went to the Air Force research institute for state trials. As with the MiG-15, the most common reason for extra test flights was trimming the aircraft so that it flew straight at maximum speed.[3]

In 1952 the plant delivered 100 MiG-17s, exactly as planned. Early in 1953, when Plant No. 1 in Kuibyshev (now Samara) stopped building the type, Gorky became the lead factory for the MiG-17. That year it delivered 925 aircraft, nine times as many as in the year before, though slightly short of a plan of 955 because of bad flying weather in September and December; in 1954 it built 470 more.[3]

In 1953 a team from the Ministry's institute of aviation technology compared the flight-test shops of four aircraft factories and found Gorky's the most efficient: about 700 man-hours of airfield work per aircraft, against 1,250 at the Kuibyshev plant, and a cycle of two days. A fighter received from the assembly shop at six in the evening was ready for its first flight at half past seven the next morning. In the same year, however, comparative trials of production MiG-17s from Plants No. 21, No. 1 and No. 126 at the Air Force research institute recorded "low quality of production" of the Gorky aircraft.[3]

The all-weather MiG-17P and MiG-17PF

In 1953 Gorky began building the MiG-17P ("type 57"), an all-weather interceptor with the RP-1 Izumrud radar designed by the bureau of V. V. Tikhomirov. The radar had two antennas, a search antenna in the upper lip of the air intake and an aiming antenna in the central splitter; the nose was reshaped, and the cannon armament changed to three 23 mm guns. Installing and testing an airborne radar was new for the plant. The Ministry sent it eight young radio engineers and paid for a 4,000-square-metre hangar, the plant set up a special workshop, and graduates of Gorky University were hired to tune the sets. Each MiG-17P made two acceptance flights; on the second the radar was checked against an Il-28 bomber used as a target, and the average detection range over ten measurements had to exceed 6 km. The plant built 178 MiG-17Ps in 1953 and 47 in 1954.[3]

The MiG-17PF ("type 58") added the afterburning VK-1F engine. Its afterburner and radar caused so much trouble that in 1954 each aircraft needed on average 9.4 extra tuning flights besides the five planned ones, and some up to twenty. On these aircraft the plant introduced, for the first time, photographic checking of the radar in flight: the radar display and the gunsight head were filmed by the gun camera. Gorky built 278 MiG-17PFs in 1954 and 110 in 1955.[3]

The plant also built the test aircraft of the SP-6, a MiG-17PF with the K-5 system in which the cannon were removed and four rails for RS-2US guided air-to-air missiles were fitted: two aircraft in 1956 and two in 1960. After trials the type was accepted into service as the MiG-17PFU, and most MiG-17PFs in Air Force units were converted to this standard. Other experimental aircraft from Gorky included ten MiG-17PFs with the Yastreb infrared direction finder in place of the radar, a MiG-17PF with equipment for trials of in-flight refuelling, and five aircraft adapted for the VSS-04 high-altitude pressure suit. Many of these ideas, the plant history notes, were carried over to the MiG-19 and the MiG-21.[3]

MiG-17 production in Gorky ended in 1955. By then the plant was preparing the supersonic MiG-19: its flight tests began on 25 January 1955, and on 3 July that year, according to the plant, 48 MiG-19s took part in the air parade at Tushino in Moscow.[4]

The test pilots

Every MiG-17 was flown by a plant test pilot and then by a pilot of the Air Force acceptance team at the factory. As output grew, new pilots joined in 1953 — Nikolai Sedov, Konstantin Kvitkovsky and Ibragim Chabdarov at the plant, Nikolai Shelamonov, Alexei Deev and Gleb Vakhmistrov in the military acceptance — and in 1954 Leonid Nesteruk and Alexei Zhuchkov.[3] Leonid Minenko, a wartime Il-2 pilot, tested Gorky's MiG-17s from December 1952 and was deputy head of the flight-test station for flying in 1954–1970; on 1 May 1957 he and his colleague Nikolai Alifanov were made Heroes of the Soviet Union.[5]

Two pilots died in MiG-17 acceptance flights. On 29 May 1953 Valentin Shamin, who had grown up in Dzerzhinsk and learned to fly at its aero club, crashed on his second flight of the day in aircraft No. 5421-1253, probably while checking its trim at maximum speed. The investigating commission concluded that he had taken the aircraft to maximum speed at too low an altitude; eyewitnesses later said that the fighter had been struck by lightning and that the pilot turned the barely controllable aircraft away from the village of Bolshoye Kozino before it crashed.[3][6] On 26 September 1954 Alexei Zhuchkov was killed when the weather deteriorated during a test flight. After his death the Minister of the Aviation Industry ordered the plant to hurry the completion of a second runway, because the existing one did not ensure safe take-offs and landings, and to reorganise its flight-test station.[3][7]

Memory

The best-known MiG-17 in the city stands on a tall pylon in the Moskovsky District, where Yaroshenko Street (улица Ярошенко) meets Baranova Street (улица Баранова), not far from the Sokol plant. The monument, designed by A. Elizarov and Yu. Gruzimov, was unveiled in 1985.[8] In the summer of 2020 the "monument with a fighter" was repaired as part of the reconstruction of Aviation Builders' Boulevard (бульвар Авиастроителей), whose new street lamps project aviation images onto the paving.[9]

A second MiG-17 stands near Nizhny Novgorod's airport at Strigino, on Bezvodnaya Street (улица Безводная); it is dedicated to the aviators of Gorky who were killed in the Second World War.[10] A third, a MiG-17F, was installed in 1974 at Istomino (Истомино) in the Balakhna District, in the garrison of the former 786th Fighter Aviation Regiment of the air defence forces; Istomino is now home to the Margelov Cadet Corps, and visitors to the school pass the aircraft on their way in.[11] A MiG-17 is also among the aircraft of the Sokol plant's own history museum, founded in 1966 on the plant's territory.[12]

See also

Sources

  1. National Museum of the United States Air Force — fact sheet "Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-17F" (archive)
  2. Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum — collection object "Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 (Ji-2) FAGOT B", inventory A19860066000 (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. testpilot.ru — biography of Leonid Ivanovich Minenko (in Russian) (archive)
  6. testpilot.ru — biography of Valentin Mikhailovich Shamin, with eyewitness accounts of his crash (in Russian) (archive)
  7. testpilot.ru — biography of Alexei Alexeyevich Zhuchkov (in Russian) (archive)
  8. autotravel-nn.ru — "MiG-17 monument in Nizhny Novgorod", sights of the Nizhny Novgorod region (in Russian) (archive)
  9. NIA Nizhny Novgorod — "Aviation Builders' Boulevard and the square on Monchegorskaya Street reopen after improvement works", 1 September 2020 (in Russian) (archive)
  10. autotravel-nn.ru — "MiG-17 monument by the airport", 9 August 2021 (in Russian) (archive)
  11. Nizhny Novgorod Metropolis — "The dean of the Balakhna district and Orthodox youth visited the Margelov Nizhny Novgorod Cadet Corps" (in Russian)
  12. transport-nn.ru — "Museum of the Nizhny Novgorod aircraft plant", 4 August 2022 (in Russian) (archive)