MiG 15

June 24 1951 - Korea. 10,000 meters over the Yalu River, the experienced American fighter pilot, Lt. Col. Bruce Hinton, was getting closer to an unaware MiG, ready for his 3rd kill. Suddenly he saw a friendly F-86 Sabre cross in front of him followed by a MiG-15, which was beating up the F-86 with its terrible 37 mm cannon. Hinton even saw big pieces of debris coming off of the stricken Sabre; Shell strikes were setting it on fire.

Instantly, Hinton flew to help his comrade. But he could not surprise the MiG-15 pilot, who saw him coming, forgot the beaten F-86, and performed a head-on pass against Hinton, passing less than 15 meters from his Sabre jet, just missing a mid-air collision. In the ensuing dogfight, Hinton needed all his expertise to get a little advantage. Hinton's wingman blacked out several times despite his g-suit. But after one circle and two low yo-yos, Hinton was able to shoot two short bursts, finally hitting the MiG. Smart enough so to know when he should quit, the skillful MiG-15 pilot disengaged and crossed the Yalu before Hinton could catch him. The MiGs were foes to be reckoned with.

One of the great fighters of all-time, the the swept-wing MiG-15 was developed by the Soviet following World War II, entering service in 1949. Designed using captured German research data and powered by an unlicensed copy of the Rolls Royce 'Nene' turbojet, the MiG 15 posed a real threat to NATO air forces at the time. In 1950 the Soviets began production of a more capable version, the MiG-15bis. The MiG-15bis used a more powerful engine and hydraulically boosted ailerons.

Operational History

The MiG 15 was first used in combat late in the Chinese Civil War, the Communist forces flying some in 1950 against the Kuomintang forces on Taiwan.

During the Korean War, Russian, Chinese, and North Korean pilots all flew the MiG-15 against United Nations forces. Due to the fact that the Soviets were not officially involved, the secretive nature of those governments, and the inevitable problems of validating claims of aerial victories, it's difficult to count up the shootdowns by MiGs in the Korean War. But, according to post-Cold War Russian sources, their MiGs ahot down over 1,000 UN aircraft, while the Chinese and North Koreans shot down much smaller, but not insignificant, numbers. Read more about Russian MiG 15 aces of the Korean War.

By 1952 the Soviets provided the MiG-15 (NATO code name "Fagot") to a number of Communist satellite nations, including North Korea. It was standard equipment for Warsaw Pact countries from the 1950s and 1960s; the North Vietnamese were still flying some MiG 15bis fighters in 1965. Throughout the 1950s MiG 15s were involved in a large number of shadowy, officially unconfirmed confrontations with Western air forces, and shot down dozens of aircraft during the decade.

Built in large numbers by the Soviet Union (12,000), it was also manufactured in Poland and Czechoslovakia, perhaps 18,000 altogether, making it one of the most-produced jets in history.

A defecting North Korean pilot flew the MiG 15 on display at Wright-Paterson AFB to Kimpo Air Base in South Korea on Sept. 21, 1953. The airplane provided important intelligence data, especially since it was the advanced version of the MiG-15. After considerable flight-testing, the United States offered to return the airplane to its "rightful owners." The offer was ignored, and in November 1957 it was transferred to the National Museum of the United States Air Force for public exhibition.

American ace Bud Mahurin offered his view of the MiG 15 in an interview:

Mahurin: The MiG and the F-86 were fairly similar, both in appearance and performance. A lot of their development came from the scientific endeavors that the Germans conducted during World War II: jet engine development and the ability of a swept-wing aircraft to fly faster than a straight wing.

Mahurin: Up until the development of the F-86, all straight wing aircraft were limited in their ability to approach the speed of sound. Based on German research during WWII, the swept wing came along; it presented a thinner wing to the air that it flew through. Thus it could go faster without compressing the air in front of the aircraft. This was a revolutionary development, it made a lot of straight wing aircraft that were being built obsolete. This established the trend for swept wings, which became the norm later on.

One of the major differences between this aircraft and the MiG-15 was that the horizontal stabilizer on the MiG-15 was mounted above the vertical stabilizer. When the MiG-15 got into a spin, the air flying off the main wings would blanket out the horizontal stabilizer and the pilot couldn’t recover. They were ordered to bail out if they got into a flat spin. The low stabilizer on the F-86 meant that we could outperform the MiG-15s in various combat maneuvers, especially turns, and so it offered an advantage over the MiG-15.

Q: What were the MiG’s advantages over the F-86s?

Mahurin: Because the MiG-15 was lighter than an F-86 it could climb a little faster. While its forward speed during the climb wasn’t quite as great as an F-86, it could still climb at a higher angle of attack, and so, it appeared to us that the MiG could really climb. And, because of its lightness, the MiG-15 could reach a higher altitude than the F-86, high enough so that we couldn’t reach them, up above 45,000 feet.

Sources:

National Museum of the USAF

The Encyclopedia of 20th Century Air Warfare, edited by Chris Bishop, 2001, Aerospace Publishing

Korean War Aces, by Robert F. Dorr, Osprey Aircraft of the Aces, 1995