The slowly fading art of flying?and maintaining?Cold War fighter jets | Ars Technica Image Unavailable, Please Login
Great, great article and pics. The lack of 'finish' on the MiG is amazing. Brackets just bolted on. Rough finish. Hard to believe it's that fast.
The boundary layer hides a lot of things. The Russians designed to slightly different criteria than we did.
I think that you are right on, Jim. In 1990 when the Russians were here I got to spend an entire week with their contingent and got a VIP tour of the airplane in which they flew here. We were astonished at how crude and brutish everything was. Food for the passengers was kept in an old refrigerator that had seen better days probably 10 years before. It was rusty, dented, and lashed to the fuselage frames with rope. Worn plywood partitions separated some things in the aft fuselage. The airplane had a main landing gear cantilevered off the rear spar and displayed a 2 inch thick external chord to support it (very much like the "Beaver Tail " on the KC-135). It wasn't faird into anything or sculptured to prevent any drag. It was just a 2 inch thick piece of aluminum 2 feet wide and about 6 feet long with the edges chamfered at 45 Deg. I suppose that it was within the boundary layer. BUT the steel bolts that fastened it were in recesses that were wide open and full of debris and rust. The pilot, Viktor Zabalotsky, said that they would refuel in Alaska, Eastern Russia, and then two more times before they got to Moscow.
I have heard that every time the Antonovs land to refuel, someone crawls out into the wing and re-tightens the engine support and pylon bolts. Don't know if it's true...
No F-5 love. In my opinion, that is distilled bull pucky. I guess if you're a Blue Angel or Thunderbird jock, you can wring out civilian lunches out in a barf-bag pulling a 5 g inverted dive on the govt dime. This would explain why many go over to the Russian MiG/Sukhoi Experience and Edge of Space flights. T/O=zoom climb, hot dogg'n it all the way. "Komrade, sign here, pay man in hangar, I wait for you in MiG over there..."
+1 One the most interesting articles (& pix) I've seen on the subject(s!) Certainly expanded my knowledge base...... Thanks for posting. Cheers, Ian
An ex Navy and current 747 pilot friend was seriously considering buying a 2 seat Mig 21. There are actually several guys here in the US sort of specializing working on them. According to Mike parts are very reasonable and complete motors were inexpensive enough nobody really bothers doing much to them, they just replace them. He said operational costs were really its voracious appetite for fuel. The one thing that really stopped him was the importation expenses. From the day it landed in the US until it was free and clear and able to be operated was going to be expensive. He also mentioned the pilots in Mother Russia get so few flying hours they were happy to supply all the dual time you wanted for free when you bought the airplane.
Brian- Operationally, the Soviets did the same thing with Mig-21s, they just swapped engines. Engine life was nowhere near what a period equivalent J-57 or J-79 provided, but the engines were a lot less expensive to start with, so no big deal. Soviet era pilots used up three days for every flight, in general. There was a day of planning and flying in a simulator, flying the sortie, and then a thorough debriefing of the sortie on the third day. Most Soviet aircraft had no numerical frequency read-outs on the radios, just letters for presets set up by the maintenance folks. This was designed to make it more difficult to defect. Doubt things are still that way today.
I guess you can just unzip the fuselage aft of the wings and unplug the motor and reverse the process pretty easily. He was saying they were really designed for easy field maintenance. It was 10 or so years ago but a crated rebuilt motor was 10 G's or so FOB Mother Russia. I got the distinct impression many of the purchases involved US $100 bills. He was buying parts for a couple of Mig 15's at the time and it was pretty amazing what he was able to get with a couple of phone calls. About the Russian rent a ride above. I know Mike was planning on a birthday present to himself in a Foxbat. He had F4's high and fast during his time as a maintenance test pilot at NAS Alameda and he figured that was a way to go higher and faster.
Yea, I have seen those apart. I got the impression the Russians took simple to a new level though. I have been up close to a number of Migs and in some cases simple also means crude. Sure got the job done on the cheap though. I know the brakes on some of the early Migs were compressed air from a bottle with no onboard compressor. You got X number (not too many) of applications and Ivan needed to refill it with an air hose. Simple.
+1 There's a lot to be said for 'simple'..... As long as the tank didn't leak, I presume the jockey knew how many 'braking events' he had left...... As we've discussed before, "you can have it good, cheap or fast. Choose two". Cheers, Ian
In many ways the proper adjective is pragmatic. The European front was a lot closer to Russia than the US. Range/fuel economy/refueling were not as big of consideration, or a consideration at all, for the Russians. Fatigue/service life was not as big of issue to the Russians (Soviets). It was all about numbers, and numbers cost $. So the answer is simple and cheap, but functional. Steel is cheaper than alum, and you'll see lots of steel on Russian designs (better strength to wt than alum in many cases anyway). Bottle starting probably saves wt and complexity over a battery/GPU powered starter. It would be interesting to know maint hrs/flt hr for 2nd and 3rd gen Russian designs. I know some of the US planes had high numbers.
Back around 1993 there was an A-4 restored to flying shape at Arlington, WA (home of the NW EAA Fly-in). I think one of the first in civilian hands. At that time Arlington was a very busy place on weekends. Lots of GA activity, including ultralights on one side of the field and gliders intermingling with reg GA on the other. One nice Sat afternoon all that was going on and they were taking the A-4 on its first post-restoration flight. Just a cool sight at the time. Everything sort of stopped for a while as we all gawked and watched.
Well those were certainly good reasons but that same philosophy carried over to much of their military hardware where the philosophy broke down. The number of Russian subs laying on the bottom suggests there was often a technology deficit and a willingness to sacrifice safety and reliability. As far as their airplanes went they had greater access to titanium than anyone on the planet. Their use of it would have been far less costly than our use of it. Not saying they were wrong, just had a very different mind set and some different limitations.
I remember when a MiG 25 pilot defected (70's?) to Japan. Surprises: it was mostly made of steel alloys, not aluminum or titanium like most other multi-mach capable planes. Hand welded. Rivets were not all flush. There was actually some rust developing in several places. It was very heavy, needing huge thirsty engines. Range was short, hundreds of miles. The electronics and radar were vacuum tubes, not solid state.
The funny part to me was it was built to counter the threat of the XB70 which was never built and based on its performance recorded over Israel (altitude and speed . As I recall 2.8 and 70k or so) we built the F15 at least according to the sources cited in a book covering the defector taking one to Japan. So we have an air superiority plane built to counter the threat of an interceptor built to counter the threat of a bomber never built. Like many Russian planes it was a one trick pony but it performed that trick pretty well.
While examining the MiG a scary discovery was made. The ejection seat lever was wired Sovietly. It was made to destroy the plane and pilot.
