MiG fighter jets are great sky fighters that have stood the test of time since the World War 2. Despite during the great war MiG fighter aircraft couldn’t be pitted against powerful Germany’s fighters, after years the Mikoyan-Gurevich, manufacturer of MiG aircraft, has made some improvement and then when jet engine were founded, many of MiG family members become well-known and feared dogfighters.
Artem Ivanovich Mikoyan and Mikhail Iosifovich Gurevich designed their first aircraft in 1939, the MiG-1. It was constructed from steel and wood and somewhat difficult to handle. However, since the situation at the time was so urgent, they kept on producing MiG-1. There were 100 units of this fighter and most of them were shot down during the beginning of Germany’s Operation Barbarossa. It was a bitter pill to swallow for Soviet, especially for Mikoyan and his partner, Gurevich.
Learning from this defeat, they made some improvements and built MiG-3. However, German Messerschmitt Bf 109 was the main threat that couldn’t be wiped out by MiG-3. Despite of it, there were 3,172 units of MiG-3 were built during 1940 to 1941. MiG-3 had to fly at low altitude to avoid dogfighting against German’s fighters. It was useful to help out ground army during the war.
MiG tried to improve Soviet air powers by developing MiG-5 and MiG-7, another variant of MiG-3 but the projects were cancelled. As the result, until the end of World War 2, MiG-3 was in service. Peace time gave more leeway to MiG for improving their potency. Finally, in 1946 they could fly the first generation of Soviet turbo jet fighter, the aircraft was baptized as MiG-9 and later NATO codenamed it Fargo. MiG-9 was a single-seater attack aircraft with maximum speed of Mach 0.8 or 910 km/h. Almost 600 units were produced during 1946 to 1948.
The supremacy of
MiG fighter continued when they developed MiG-15 Fagot. It was one of successful jet fighters at the time as there were more than 18,000 units were produced and used by many countries. It was the fierce rival of American F-86 Sabre and both of them were the legends of Korean War. Some variants of Fagot were manufactured increasing dogfight and attack capability of this fighter. One of the variants was MiG-15UTI which called Midget by NATO.
In January 1950, another family member of MiG fighter jets flew for the first time. It was MiG-17 Fresco. The jet fighter were also built in China and named Shenyang J-5 and it was also developed by Poland whih called PZL-Mielic Lim-6. This subsonic jet fighter was operated by numerous air forces in the world. Around 10,600 units were in service in around 40 countries.
MiG-19 Farmer, the first MiG’s supersonic fighter was built in 1950s and first introduced in 1955. The Farmer was developed to counter American F-100 Super Sabre and it had to dogfight against F-4 Phantom and F-105 Thunderchief many times over North Vietnam. The MiG-19 can fly as fast as 1,455 km/h and can carry some unguided rockets and missiles along with 250 kg bombs.
All of the above mentioned MiG fighters were the predecessors of modern MiG fighter jets. They all were the sky knights for many air forces and a proof of the quality of MiG fighter jets.
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