The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-25 (Микоян-Гуревич МиГ-25; NATO reporting name Foxbat) is a Soviet high-altitude interceptor and reconnaissance aircraft capable of Mach 2.83, which entered service in 1970 and is one of the fastest combat aircraft ever built.[8] It was designed in Moscow by the Mikoyan design bureau, but it was built in series by a single factory — Aircraft Plant No. 21 in Gorky, as Nizhny Novgorod, a large city on the Volga, was called from 1932 to 1990. Today the plant is the Sokol Aircraft Plant (авиазавод «Сокол»).[3][5] Between 1966 and 1985 Gorky built 1,112 MiG-25s of all versions — interceptors, reconnaissance aircraft and two-seat trainers — and the plant also built the experimental variants of the type developed by the Mikoyan bureau.[1][3][5]

For the Gorky plant the MiG-25 meant what its own history calls a technical revolution: the aircraft was made mostly of welded stainless steel, and nearly every shop had to switch from rivets to welding. The first air-defence units to receive the new interceptor, in April 1970, were based in the Gorky Region itself, at Savasleyka and Pravdinsk. In 1976 one of these Gorky-built aircraft was flown to Japan by a defecting Soviet pilot.[1][5][12]

A steel aircraft for Mach 3

The general designer Artem Mikoyan ordered work on the new aircraft, then called E-155, on 10 March 1961, in two versions: the E-155P interceptor for the Air Defence Forces and the E-155R high-speed reconnaissance aircraft for the Air Force. The task was to catch targets flying higher than 20,000 metres as far as 700 kilometres from base.[4]

The main obstacle was heat. At Mach 2 the nose of a MiG-21 already warmed to over 100 °C; at Mach 3 the skin was expected to reach 300 °C, while ordinary aluminium alloys could be used only up to 130 °C. Rather than build the whole aircraft of titanium, Mikoyan chose steel. In the finished airframe high-strength stainless steel made up 80 per cent of the weight, titanium alloys 8 per cent and heat-resistant aluminium alloy 11 per cent; half of all joints were spot or seam welds — more than 1.4 million weld points — and welded fuel tanks filled 70 per cent of the fuselage.[4] The plant later described the MiG-25 as the first fully welded aircraft in the history of aviation.[2]

The first prototype flew on 6 March 1964.[7] In 1965 the aircraft set a world record under the designation E-266; that flight became the basis of the first American technical assessments of the Foxbat.[6] The plant's history credits the MiG-25 family with 29 world records for speed, rate of climb and altitude.[2] The best known is still listed by Guinness World Records as the official altitude record for an aircraft: on 31 August 1977 the Mikoyan bureau's test pilot Alexander Fedotov reached 37,650 metres in a modified MiG-25 designated E-266M.[15]

Built in Gorky

Gorky Aircraft Plant No. 21, named after Sergo Ordzhonikidze, had been building MiG fighters since 1949 and in the early 1960s was turning out the MiG-21 in large numbers.[1][2][4] Its reputation for quality — plant veterans recall that workers on the MiG-21 assembly line wore white coats and that hammers were banned, in case the chief engineer Talgat Seifi heard one — and its own quality-management system made it the obvious choice for the new aircraft. The plant was headed by Alexander Yaroshenko; Seifi was its chief engineer, V. A. Myurisep its chief technologist and Evgeny Mindrov its chief designer.[4]

The plant joined the programme in the early 1960s. In 1965 the government decided on full-scale series production, and because the Mikoyan bureau's own experimental factory was too small, Gorky was given the order for the initial batch of reconnaissance and interceptor aircraft. In May 1965 the fuselage and assemblies of the first MiG-25 arrived in Gorky by water from Dubna near Moscow. On 6 May 1966 the flight-test shop received the first MiG-25 assembled at the plant, and on 6 July 1966 the Mikoyan bureau's chief pilot, Alexander Fedotov, took it into the air — the start of MiG-25 production in Gorky. The first aircraft of the initial batch to roll out of the assembly shop was the reconnaissance MiG-25R-3 (E-155R-3).[1][4][5]

The old final-assembly building was too small for the new aircraft. To get a finished MiG-25 out through the shop gates, the workers detached its wings, lifted its nose with a crane so that the tail dropped, rolled it on a special trolley and removed the radio-transparent tips of the fins — and then put everything back once the aircraft was outside. New, spacious assembly halls were soon built for the steel aircraft.[4]

The MiG-25, the plant's history says, "predetermined a technical revolution at the enterprise": welding had to be introduced and learned from scratch in almost every shop that made fuselage and wing tank sections, and workers, designers and technologists had to master new trades. Two Leningrad organisations spent about ten years building welding machines to the plant's specifications, and over ten years of producing the steel aircraft the plant installed 1,192 new machine tools, 220 of them numerically controlled.[1][4][5] Gorky designers also solved problems that appeared in service: when the ribs of the forward wing tanks began to crack, a repair method devised by the plant's designers and workers was called a work of genius by the Mikoyan bureau's general designer Rostislav Belyakov, and from then on the tanks were repaired rather than replaced.[5]

The effort was rewarded. In 1970 the plant received its second Order of Lenin; in 1974 a group of its specialists received the USSR State Prize for mastering the MiG-25's production technology. Among the six leading creators of the aircraft awarded the Lenin Prize was the plant's director, Ivan Silayev.[1][5] Born in 1930, Silayev had come to the Gorky aircraft plant after graduating from the Kazan Aviation Institute in 1954 and rose from foreman to director; under his leadership new welding, machining and stamping technologies were introduced for the MiG-25. He later became the last head of the government of Soviet Russia, as Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR, and died in Nizhny Novgorod in 2023.[16]

American intelligence followed the build-up through overhead photography. A CIA assessment of September 1969 concluded that "the first series-produced Foxbat was probably completed about March or April of this year": the number of Foxbats detected in such photography had nearly tripled in recent months, "with most of the increase being at the production facility, Gorkiy Airframe Plant 21", where air-to-air missiles and drop tanks for the aircraft had been noticed in May. The same paper recorded the "near-unanimous technical judgment" of US analysts that the record-breaking E-266 and the Foxbat seen in photographs were two different aircraft, while warning that the Foxbat might be stronger and more capable than estimated.[6]

At the end of 1969 the state trials of the reconnaissance MiG-25R were completed and it went into series production; full-scale production of the MiG-25P interceptor followed in 1971.[5] At its peak Gorky turned out 90 MiG-25s a year, and over the production run the labour needed to build one fell tenfold. Interceptor production ended in 1979, and the last MiG-25s of other versions were built in 1985.[5] The plant's figures by five-year period:[5]

YearsMiG-25s built in Gorky
1967–197079
1971–1975343
1976–1980402
1981–1985288
Total1,112

Other published totals are higher: the Nizhny Novgorod City Museum of Equipment and Defence Industry, for example, gives 1,190.[17] Gorky-built MiG-25s served in the Soviet Union and later in several CIS countries, and were exported to Iraq, Syria, Algeria, Libya, India and Bulgaria.[1]

The test pilots of Gorky

Flight testing of the steel aircraft at Gorky started badly: in the first flights two aircraft were damaged on landing, and Mikoyan ordered the flights stopped. Fedotov came to the plant and, as the plant's chief test pilot V. G. Gordienko, a Hero of the Soviet Union, later recalled, gave him his blessing to continue. On 31 August 1968, during a climb to maximum altitude, the hydraulic accumulators exploded at 16 kilometres and over 2,000 km/h; the test pilot Leonid Minenko ejected and survived with broken legs. On another flight Gordienko, after a string of failures including the main hydraulic system, managed to land a MiG-25R at the nearest military airfield, at Pravdinsk.[5]

The steel aircraft was flown by the plant's test pilots G. B. Vakhmistrov, I. V. Karelin, M. N. Elkinbard and V. V. Veselovsky and by a new generation that included A. M. Vlasov, N. M. Zhitnev, Vladimir Herodinov, A. F. Shapovalov, A. P. Shchelkunov and Boris Larionov. The first of the military acceptance pilots to fly a Gorky MiG-25 was Colonel V. E. Kuznetsov, who received the Order of Lenin for the tests.[5]

Boris Varenov, born in 1932 in the village of Sokolskoye, now in the Nizhny Novgorod Region, was a military acceptance test pilot at the Gorky plant from 1967. On 12 May 1970 his MiG-25P broke up in the air at an altitude of five kilometres after exceeding the permissible speed and Mach number in a descent; he was killed. He is buried in Nizhny Novgorod.[11]

Vladimir Herodinov (1938–1990), an Honoured Test Pilot of the USSR, joined the Gorky plant in December 1969 and tested series MiG-25s until 1978. He made the first flights of the plant's lead MiG-31 (22 August 1978), MiG-25PD (20 March 1979) and MiG-29UB (2 December 1985), and was killed on 22 June 1990 in a test flight of a MiG-29UB.[9] Boris Larionov (1941–1993), a test pilot at the plant from 1971, tested series MiG-25s from 1971 to 1985 and was killed on 3 February 1993, also in a MiG-29UB. Both are buried at the Novo-Sormovskoye Cemetery in Nizhny Novgorod.[9][10]

Into service

Before the aircraft could be delivered to the military in the normal way, the plant had to help the Air Force centre in Lipetsk work out a method for assessing its flight performance; a 25-strong team from the plant, including Gordienko, completed the task by 7 November 1969. In April 1970 the MiG-25 entered service with air-defence units in the Gorky Region — at Savasleyka and Pravdinsk — supported by warranty teams from the plant; in June and July 1970 it reached a unit at Shatalovo. Within a few years of the start of production the airframe's service life was raised from 50 to 1,000 hours and the engine's from 25 to 750 hours.[5]

The Foxbat that flew to Japan

On 6 September 1976 the Soviet pilot Viktor Belenko landed his MiG-25 at Hakodate Airport on the Japanese island of Hokkaido and defected.[12] Like every series MiG-25, his aircraft had been built in Gorky.[3][5] Before it was returned, the aircraft was taken apart and analysed in minute detail by American experts; according to a former CIA officer, it proved "substantially less spectacular" than intelligence estimates had described it. The examiners found stainless steel where titanium had been expected, and a radar full of vacuum tubes.[13][14] After 67 days of study the aircraft was shipped back to the Soviet Union in pieces.[14]

For the Gorky plant the defection meant urgent work. To keep the interceptor force effective, a government decree of 4 November 1976 mobilised the aircraft, radio and other defence industries to re-equip both the aircraft in production and those already built. A technical solution was found within three to four weeks; the plant's shop No. 31 under Yu. V. Balakirev drew up a modification bulletin of five volumes of 500 typewritten pages each, with as many volumes of drawings. The new production version was designated MiG-25PD ("modified"); earlier aircraft brought up to the same standard during overhauls at repair plants became the MiG-25PDS. The conversions continued until 1982.[5] The first Gorky-built MiG-25PD was flown by the plant's test pilot Vladimir Herodinov on 20 March 1979.[9]

The MiG-25 abroad

Gorky's link with its aircraft did not end with deliveries. In 1995 seven MiG-25s in India reached the limit of their service life, and specialists from the Sokol plant carried out the work needed to extend it.[5]

One Gorky-built MiG-25 ended up in the United States.[3] In 2003 American forces found a MiG-25RB reconnaissance aircraft buried in the sand near Al Taqaddum air base, about 250 kilometres west of Baghdad, where it had been hidden to protect it from coalition airstrikes. Recovered without its wings, it arrived at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton, Ohio, in 2006, and in December 2025 it was put on temporary display in the museum's Cold War Gallery. "The MiG-25 is interesting not only as an adversary warbird, but also for what the fear of it did to the American defense establishment in the late 1960s," the museum's curator Will McLaughlin said; the museum links that fear to the development of the American F-15 fighter.[8]

Memory in Nizhny Novgorod

A two-seat MiG-25PU trainer stands in the open-air display of the Nizhny Novgorod City Museum of Equipment and Defence Industry in Victory Park (Парк Победы), which lists Gorky's Plant No. 21 as its maker.[17] This aircraft, factory number 22034855, served with the 786th Fighter Aviation Regiment at Pravdinsk, was kept at the plant from 2001 and was handed over to the museum in July 2013.[18] At the plant itself, as of 2002, a MiG-25P stood outside the assembly shop in the line of MiG fighters built there over its history.[5]

The aviation writer Evgeny Podrepny, who described the type's production in Gorky, concluded that the MiG-25, known in the West as the Foxbat, "has two homelands: Moscow, where the Mikoyan design bureau that created this famous aircraft is located, and Nizhny Novgorod, where these machines were built in series".[5] The Gorky plant itself is now the Nizhny Novgorod Aircraft Plant Sokol, a branch of the United Aircraft Corporation.[16]

See also

Sources

  1. Nizhny Novgorod Aircraft Plant Sokol — "History of the plant", official website of the plant, 2014 (in Russian) (archive)
  2. Nizhny Novgorod Aircraft Plant Sokol — "History", official website of the plant, English version, 2004 (archive)
  3. Nizhny Novgorod Aircraft Plant Sokol — "History", official website of the plant, 2002 (in Russian) (archive)
  4. Ispytateli (testpilot.ru) — Evgeny Podrepny, "The steel Foxbat from Nizhny Novgorod", part 1, reprinted from Aviatsiya i Kosmonavtika, 2002, No. 10 (in Russian) (archive)
  5. Ispytateli (testpilot.ru) — Evgeny Podrepny, "The steel Foxbat from Nizhny Novgorod", part 2, reprinted from Aviatsiya i Kosmonavtika, 2002, No. 10 (in Russian)
  6. Central Intelligence Agency — Directorate of Intelligence, Office of Strategic Research, "Contribution to NIE 11-14-69: Soviet and East European General Purpose Forces. Part II — Ground and Air Forces", SR SP 69-12, September 1969 (released 2012) (archive)
  7. Polish Aviation Museum, Kraków — "Maiden flight of the MiG-25", museum calendar (archive)
  8. National Museum of the U.S. Air Force — Cheryl Prichard, "National Museum of the U.S. Air Force Debuts Two New Special Exhibits", 9 December 2025 (archive)
  9. Ispytateli (testpilot.ru) — Vladimir Alekseevich Herodinov, biography, after A. A. Simonov, Honoured Test Pilots of the USSR (Moscow, 2009) (in Russian) (archive)
  10. Ispytateli (testpilot.ru) — Boris Vladimirovich Larionov, biography (in Russian) (archive)
  11. Ispytateli (testpilot.ru) — Boris Alekseevich Varenov, biography, after Ya. A. Isaenko, N. D. Levadny, A. M. Elkinbard, Pilots, Tests, Aircraft (Nizhny Novgorod: NAZ Sokol, 2005) (in Russian) (archive)
  12. Central Intelligence Agency — W. Lee Radcliffe, review of Brad Williams, Japanese Foreign Intelligence and Grand Strategy, Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 66, No. 1, March 2022 (archive)
  13. Air & Space Forces Magazine — Jeffrey T. Richelson, "Spying on the MiGs", March 2011 (archive)
  14. HistoryNet — Stephan Wilkinson, "The MiG-25 Terrified the West Until a Defector Exposed Its True Nature", 20 July 2022 (archive)
  15. Guinness World Records — "Highest altitude by an aircraft (official)" (archive)
  16. Argumenty i Fakty — Elena Slobodyan, "What is the last Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR, Ivan Silayev, remembered for?", 9 February 2023 (in Russian) (archive)
  17. Nizhny Novgorod City Museum of Equipment and Defence Industry — "MiG-25PU", exhibit description (in Russian) (archive)
  18. kpopov.ru — Konstantin Popov, "Nizhny Novgorod City Museum of Equipment and Defence Industry": exhibits, including the MiG-25PU (in Russian)