The aircraft design bureau headed by Artem Mikoyan and Mikhail Gurevich, which has gone down in history by the amalgamation of the first letters of their last names as MiG, was formed on December 8th, 1939 - 80 years ago, plus a few days. Today it's the "Russian Aircraft Corporation MiG" division of United Aircraft Corporation of Russia, and is still going strong.
To celebrate the anniversary, the company produced this short video highlighting several of its most famous designs, from the MiG-1 and MiG-3 fighters of World War II, to the MiG-15 that terrorized Allied aircraft during the Korean War, to the MiG-17, -19 and -21 of the Vietnam War era, to the MiG-29 that was designed to counter the US F-16, to the MiG-31 interceptor that today carries the Kh-47M2 Kinzhal hypersonic ballistic missile.
Some of those MiG's gave me a few gray hairs during my time in the Southern African bush. I described one such encounter recently.
Congratulations are in order to a very long-lived aviation design bureau. I can't think of many that have lasted that long.
Peter
2 comments:
Israel sells a really neat upgraded version of the Mig-21, all glass cockpit, updated engine, the whole schmear. Which actually makes it a viable semi-4th gen fighter.
But, well, for the most part, I see them, as juvat would say, as 'targets.'
With modern ECM, the MiG-21 is apparently very difficult to get a lock-on from head-on until you're pretty close. If they're willing to push it into a knife fight, some will make it and they'll be carrying very effective modern heaters, too.
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