Tupolev “Heaviest bomber” – Blackjack The Tupolev Tu-160 Blackjack is heaviest and most powerful combat bomber aircraft of all time. This strategic bomber was built to a programme which began in 1967 when DA (long- range aviation) Gen-Col Reshetnikov studied the Sukhoi T-4MS (so-called ’200′) and Myasishchev M- 20. VVS chief Kutakhov assigned Sukhoi smaller …
Vietnamese MiG-21 – The creation of an Air Force Research Committee on 9th March 1949 laid the foundations of the Khöng Quart Nhan Dan Viet Nam (Vietnamese People’s Army Air Force, VPAF). Its first unit, 919 Transport Regiment was created on 9th May 1949, and in 1963 the VPAF was merged with the Air Defence …
A surprising number of MiG-21 s of various types were presented to the USAF, no doubt in the hope, if not expectation of favours in return. Many of MiG-21 USAF never actually operated in the USA but were broken down and examined in minute detail. The USAF put a thick veil of secrecy over the …
The Syrian Arab Air Force was established in the early 1950s and its first Syrian MiG-21 F-13 (izdeliye 74) fighters arrived around 1962-63. Between 1958 and 1961 Syria was, with Egypt, a constituent of the United Arab Republic (UAR) but their ways were now diverging, leaving as their only common cause a shared enmity with …
Delivery of MiG-21 PF (izdeliye 76) began in 1965. The Romanian AF gave the Romanian MiG-21 PF the local designation MIG-21 RFM (radar fortaj modernizat, radar/afterburner/modernised) and on arrival equipped 86 RdeV at Borcea-Feteeti and 91 RdeV at Deveselu. The survivors were finally withdrawn from service and grounded in the early 1990s and all put …
Polish MiG- 21 s carried red serials, the first one or two digits indicating the production batch number and the final two the number of the aircraft in the batch. As can be seen from the serials, the fighters delivered to Poland were from the 12th, 20th, 22nd and 23rd production batches at Gor’kiy and …
Israel MiG-21 – Undoubtedly a number of MiG-21s of several different subtypes fell into Israeli hands in the series of wars with Egypt, Syria and Iraq in the 1960s and l970s.The most famous is the MiG-21 F-13 serialled 007. There were actually two different aircraft so serialled: the first was the aforementioned Iraqi Air Force …