ALUMINIUM FALCON - The MiG-15 Was An Underestimated Soldier Aircraft That Terrorised The West
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 ต.ค. 2024
- The historical record of fighter aircraft necessarily simplifies their qualities and capabilities. Reputations build down the generations. Some fighters are appreciated like fine wines, classy and ageless. Their meticulously crafted details are loved and obsessed over.
The MiG-15 is not one of those aircraft. It is remembered as an agricultural fighter. A tractor of the sky. A sufficiently dangerous antagonist to make poster-boy Sabre seem that much more impressive, but fundamentally a crude and ugly plane.
When it first emerged NATO called it the Falcon. Then they decided that this was too complementary and re-dubbed it the Fagot. A meatball made of minced offcuts and offal. That’s how they wanted it to be seen. A German design, a British engine, various obsolete Soviet and copied Luftwaffe components mashed together.
That’s not this story. This is the story of a weapon of war. A soldier aircraft. On one side of its genetic lineage, it is the ultimate realisation of early 1940s jet fighter design German philosophy. On the other it is a deliberately simple device intended to revolutionise an entire air arm in one strategic move.
Whereas its counterpart in the US started out with straight wings and muddled its way to greatness, the MiG-15 was the realisation of a single clear vision. When the West encountered it for the first time it terrorised them. It effectively ended the front line careers of the B29 and straight wing fighters across the board. Only the Sabre could match it in the air.
This is the story of the Soviet Union’s Aluminium Falcon. The MiG-15. Alongside my Sabre deep dive, it serves as a jumping off point to analysing the statistics of swept wing jet combat in the Korean War. I hope I've done justice to an aircraft that I personally regard as one of the greats.
Notes and Sources:
The companion F-86 Sabre Deep Dive is here: • SABRE: Development And...
Amongst other books, I found myself referring to Yefim Gordon's Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15: The Soviet Union's Long-Lived Korean War Fighter more than most
Also:
Walkaround: MiG-15 Fagot by Hans-Heiri Stapfer
MiG-15 In Action, also by Hans-Heiri Stapfer
MiG-15 Aces of the Korean War by Leonid Krylov
Red Devils over the Yalu: A Chronicle of Soviet Aerial Operations in the Korean War 1950-53 by Igor Seidov
F-80 Shooting Star Units Over Korea by Warren Thompson
![[UNCUT] “บอสณวัฒน์” ลากไส้!! ใครหนุนหลัง "แม่ตั๊ก ป๋าเบียร์" I คนดังนั่งเคลียร์ I 30 ก.ย. 67](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/QlD7mU2KKRk/mqdefault.jpg)
And just when I was about to start watching a hot new series on Netflix. Oh well, here goes another hour of my life
Is it not time well spent?
Going to be better than anything on RevisionistFlix….
@@jeffreyskoritowski4114
Right? I see this as an hour *_gained._*
You made the correct decision.
Netflix is the waste of time.
MiG 15 all the way. Korean War Legacy...
6:55
I've heard that it was a common joke within MiG, and among the pilots, that the fences on the wings were there to prevent the airflow from defecting. 😊
That's hilarious, I gotta remember that one!!
@@s.marcus3669
It's also the reason the MiG-17 had three, bigger fences instead of two - increased security to stop the treasonous airflow from escaping into imperialist hands . . .
🤪
Lol!😂
MiGs were not a joke. They produced many communist aces and provoked the creation of top gun. The phantom 2 were then exploited for their strengths and created American aces.
Sorry I missed the joke and haven't watched the video. Given my limited understanding of aerodynamics I had thought that those wing boards were to help maintain laminar flow in low speed situations. Ie slightly lower stall speed. Ie resist flow deflection
The biggest problem with the MiG-15 was its penchant for losing flight control if the plane exceeded Mach 0.92, particularly in a dive. That's why the MiG-17 had a different wing and other changes to improve stability near Mach 1, and that fighter had a long career with many air forces.
It wasn't aluminum, it was armored and America was never able to kill it.
Wikipedia had a edit war to hide Yamato sinking itself. Likewise it has bullshit kill ratios.
During the Korean war, it was a MiG-15 flown by a PLAAF chinese pilot that shot down and killed a USAF American ace pilot George Andrew Davis Jr who was flying an American made F-86 Sabre during their dogfight.
@@Paul-H-Wolfram6608😂 still haven't figured out that they were no Chinese piloting Mig 15 in Korea? The Russians did declassified this decades ago. All 15s were flown by Soviet pilots, "LARPing" as Chinese and forbidden to speak anything then Mandarin. And all were experienced WW2 vets probably most were Aces too. Not saying that the mig was not impressive for the time but it was about on par with the "Saber" both had things better and worse than the other. I don't know if you can find the story about how the Soviets got the engines from Rolls Royce in English but if you can, both are interesting and hilarious.
Yep, assuming DCS is remotely accurate, even below that Mach number (say, 0.8 or so) feels really iffy. The controls are just super sluggish while the Sabre handles those speeds with no problems at all.
@@vladimirmihnev9702
I have a hard time believing you could teach Russian pilots Mandarin to a competent level AND expect them to use it in the chaos and excitement of combat. For whatever reason, could it be those documents were falsified? Or maybe, like many Stalinist era orders, they were just orders that couldn't possibly be fulfilled but would make Stalin happy.
Considering the F-86 was the only aircraft that could challenge it, it's fair to say it's a great aircraft.
The training of the Saber Drivers might’ve helped some as well.
"underestimated F-15" was a big stretch to even start with. The F-86 was designed to kill it, not the other way around, the Mig-15 was great.
The Sabre was under armed. That required getting danger close, then hosing the target. Rather like British fighters and bombers in 1940, armed with the ridiculous .303's, facing German 20mm cannons.
The Mig15 blew away B29's easily with either gun, but numerous B29's got blown apart with 2 or 3 hits by the 37mm.
@@OrvietaHow exactly was the F 86 designed to kill the Mig 15? The Sabres first flight in early Oct 47 was near three months before the Migs first flight in late Dec 47. Both planes were designed and intended as interceptors. They became default air superiority fighters because they far outclassed anything else in the air.
@@Ares-jx4epThe F86 underwent a major overhaul to improve its specs when the USA found out about the Mig 15 over Korea. Result was the F86D.
For myself, a US veteran; "All versions of all Soviet/Russian military aircraft are garbage compared to any contemporary US military aircraft" is a hard concept, well... feeling, to overcome when attempting to evaluate the relative capabilities of each country's air forces. To be fair, the same concept is true for most Soviet/Russia military vets, as well as most any country's veterans where that country produced or modified viable designs that competed on the world stage, for example, Britain, France, and Sweden produced outstanding unique designs and Canada and Israel produced modified designs of aircraft that were arguably better than the original, licensed version, to name just a few examples of each. Anyway, my point is that bias is very hard to overcome in any time you are attempting to compare any 'thing' of your country or 'side' against that 'thing's' competition produced by another country or 'side', as it were. The Narrator of our beloved channel, @Not A Pound For Air To Ground, manages to overcome this bias quite well.
You'll see it a lot on 9 hole reviews, one of them is a US vet & heard all the same about the AK being worthless past x00 yards & so inaccurate as to be ineffective.
But then he'll demonstrate shooting one out to 600m without too much difficulty
It's interesting to see the disconnect
@Not A Pound For Air To Ground is clearly English just by going off his accent.
No respect for the MIG 21?
Just kidding. As you say our stuff is either the very best or the very worst. No middle ground.
It's the amerikans and their way of thinking which is garbage.😂
By far your most detailed and in depth researched video so far. I would go as far as to say that this is the most informative video that I have ever watched on the Mig 15, equalling some of the aviation books I have read on the subject. Well done sir, I avidly follow your content and each time a new video appears I save it for evening “my time” when I can watch and savour it. A small request, keep up the 50s and 60s jet videos, personally I’d love to see one on the Gloster Javelin 😊
YES!👍👍
"What the hell is a aluminum falcon!?"
I feel like that's from a star wars spoof but I don't know which one. Lol
Great video man. Indepth but not boring,lots of great film footage I've never seen of the Mig-15 (if I use its Nato designation I'll catch a ban lmao) fighter. You are the the up and coming Drachfinel of warplanes.
It's from the Robot Chicken version. Specifically, Papa Palpatine's phone call with Vader.
OMG, he's crying!
It's really depressing that just mentioning the word (the one with only one "g") is potential banhammer bait...
My Grandma's 'gafots'* are still one of my happiest childhood memories.
@@SounakDas-zb3xcthank you man lol I couldn't remember from what. Hahaahahhahah
When the Aluminum Falcon came out, Roosevelt tried to kill Eisenhower with his lightning powers, but MacArthur rediscovered his humanity, threw him into the rebuilt White House core, and looked at his son without his giant hat one time before fading away.
Truman got a star destroyer to his face.
Source: pieced together from old sugar packets.
One of the best 60 minutes I ever spent on TH-cam, thank you for this. I have a huge interest in Cold War jets, especially the MiGs and US straight wings. 👍🏻👍🏻
This is the best documentary I've ever watched on the classic MiG-15, loved it and thank you!
my dad was in the korean war usaf. he said when those migs showed up the usaf was shocked how good it was.
Your dad was a war hero ❤
@@binder946the United States killed 20% of the population of North Korea, mostly civilians. There's no way for me to know if the commenters dad was happy about that or not, but he was no hero.
Because it shouldn't have been. Russia was behind about 10 years with jet engine technology. A couple guys from Russia were sent to visit Rolls Royce to ask for an engine. When told they replied "they'll never just give us one of their engines" well guess what? The morons at RR gave them two of their best engines. The excuse was "they'll never be able reverse engineer it and if they do they are incapable of mass producing it"... Well they did, and they did, and were able to create the MiG-15. If not for those idiots the MiG-15 would not have been and the Korean War would have been MUCH different.
@@RedTail1-1 nah china beat us on the ground. if they had a air force with lots of migs it would have been much worse.
@RedTail1-1 you are aware they made their first jet in 1945 just 2 years after britian and the u.s
Not a Pound just gave us all a fantastic Christmas present/New Year's Day gift. An hour long episode on the MiG-15? Let's go!
Really a great video. Very informative. I am a WWII and Cold War aviation buff. I discovered TH-cam documentaries about a year ago. Since then, I have watched many dozens of TH-cam videos about military aircraft. This is the best one that I've see so far. You do your research very well. Lots of interesting detail here.
Thank you!
It was a workhorse, not a racehorse... Kurt Tanks FW190 philosophy for the jet age
Yes, Tank - have a look at the wings of the Ta 183.
A state of the art jet fighter, in its time, both performing the air superiority and interceptor tasks has to be a racehorse and a workhorse!
Which the Mig-15 and the Sabre were!
He actually said a "cavalry horse" not a race horse" No ideas where 'work horse" comes from, but TY anyway.
@@robertsolomielke5134 "dienst pferd" literally service horse...
"The Messerschmitt 109 [[i]sic] and the British Spitfire, the two fastest fighters in the world at the time we began work on the Fw 190, could both be summed up as a very large engine on the front of the smallest possible airframe; in each case armament had been added almost as an afterthought. These designs, both of which admittedly proved successful, could be likened to racehorses: given the right amount of pampering and easy course, they could outrun anything. But the moment the going became tough they were liable to falter ..... This was the background thinking behind the Focke-Wulf 190; it was not to be a racehorse but a Dienstpferd, a cavalry horse."
@@RichardGoth TY. The FW 190 also had fair armor, so we think that's why Kurt made the cavalry horse reference , a horse for war conditions , to keep going , where a race horse is on the frail side of things, pampered for peak performance.
This is such a good video. If you have not heard of No Kum-Sok, that’s how America got their hands on the Mig 15. There’s a very good book out there about that pilot. If you have ever been to the museum in Dayton, Ohio, that’s No’s Mig.
No-Kum-Sok? Sounds like advice for a hormonal teenager who spends too much time in his room.
Franciszek Jarecki delivered one on Bornholm, in NATO, on 5. of March 1953, half a year earlier than No-Kum-Sok delivered his MIG 15. All in all Bornholm recieved three MIG 15s.
That would be Full-Kum-Suk
@@life_of_riley88 Poor mother doing the laundry.
Or as he changed his name to after his defection, Kenneth H. Rowe.
One of the best channels on TH-cam hands down. Thank you for your service!!
"landed successfully, collected his money, and then probably went and got drunk"
Unsubstantiated slander! *hic*
Haha
Why the British gave the Soviets example(s) of top current jet technology when they were seeing the Iron Curtain falling is still a historical mystery to me.
A diplomatic thing at the time, no doubt. West Berlin diplomacy? US just refused us Marshall post-war funding. Who really knows.
That's because you don't know history very well. The "iron curtain" quip was made by Mr Churchill who was not the PM at the time when the government of Mr Attlee decided to be nice to the Soviets.
@@roo72
There was Russian things going on by Russian in London at the time, anti-Stalin. I say again, who knows.
To be blunt Britain was bunkrupt after the war and had massive loans to pay back from America
I am old enough to remember soviet embassy posters covering the wall of my school social studies class and teachers enthusiastically suggesting we get some by contacting the embassy ourselves. There was a definite fanboy culture for the USSR in certain areas of the public service across the Commonwealth so this incident never surprised me.
I really wish you would include metric measurements so I don't have to open a conversion calculator every 2 minutes
I believe the 262’s swept wings were not added for aerodynamic efficiency, but to alleviate CoG issues with the engine nacelles.
the usual nonsense. in 1935 the germans held a lecture ,inviting british designers too, about the benefits of swept wings. as usual the british had the intention : we re so good we do not need german stuff. so Meteor and Vampires (:-)
While the Germans had done considerable research on swept wing technology, swept wings were never part of the 262 design. The initial 262 design had straight wings just like the early British and US designs. However when the engines were relocated to wing nacelles, the CoG of the plane was thrown off. The simplest fix was to sweep the wings back slightly.
Are you saying that Me 262's original design didn't call for wing mounted engines?
@@MrRobertX70 yeah originally they were to be mounted on the fuselage, like the Bell Airacomet.
I have heard this as well. To dispel this myth, note the wing sweep of the empinage. There is truth to the center of gravity shift but it was indeed also swept for better low transonic aerodynamics.
Anyone who says the MiG-15 is just a tractor has no idea. So they didn't get it perfect, they got it first. No one knew exactly what they were doing at that time. And the science that went into designing it was just as advanced as any at the time. The way it looks also has nothing to do with how technical the construction is. I think you will find that it isn't just made it angle iron with sheet metal riveted all over it. It was made the way any aircraft was made, and significantly more advanced than the WW2 year era aircraft of a few years before. The F-86 was no more "advanced" than having better equipment fitted into it.
I just ordered a 1/32 Mig 15 Hobbykraft kit! It will look great sitting next to my Italeri 1/32 F 86 Sabre!! And compliment my Revell 1/32 Phantom and 1/32 Trumpeter Mig 21!! In November 1996 I bought my first computer. Don't remember exactly when I found "Chuck Yeager's Air Combat" flight sim in the bargain bin! I have been modeling these aircraft since!!
*On behalf of Soviet people i thank your countrymen for helping us in defending our country from nuclear annihilation by selling us the Nene engine* .
Regarding the primary role of MiG-15: i think it is important to take a closer look at its 23mm cannons. They are a class heavier than cannons used in previous fighters.
A 20mm ShVAK cannon fired 96 gram round with 6.7grams of explosives at 790m/s muzzle velocity. 800 rounds per minute.
NS-23 fired 198 gram round with 15.6 gram of explosives at 690m/s muzzle velocity. 600 rounds per minute.
While ShVAK round was quite underpowered for its caliblre, it was still sufficient to tear any fighter plane a new one. A shift towards lower fire rate and muzzle velocity negatively impacted the dogfighting performance. I have only one explanation for that: long-range performance against sturdy targets. Bombers.
So, even though MiG-15 was designed both as interceptor and fighter, i beleive the interceptor role was heavily prioritised. And i think i was justified considering the threat of B-29 hordes bringing Totality or Dropshot to your home.
The levels of detail and depth you apply to your content is greatly appreciated - most of the world seems to love reductive, click-baity 30 second clips for short-memories and shorter attention spans, the rest of us can actually learn a thing or two 👍🍻
My father worked in the aircraft industry for around 20 years so I've always loved these early jets. It was funny reading about how much distain Western pilots had for the MiG because of it's looks then that quickly turned into grudging respect after actually engaging them. I appreciate the objective analysis, it was interesting and well done and the narration is fantastic. Just subscribed 💙
As an Englishman I do understand and share some of the guilt about the Rolls-Royce Nene turbojet we didn't know however that are allies covering the eastern front of World War II had the future after the war with the axis powers would come back to bite the B-29 over North Korea and the tupolev design Bureau would make copies of the B-29 when the Americans landed in Russia as they couldn't return to safety in the Pacific Islands making special design markings on the tail so mistakes wouldn't happen
I enjoyed your video the Russian would say the west make plane like fine watch we make like tank
History is full of best intentions
I hear the decision for the English turbojet some history says it was over billiards but I do not believe they won the engines we are Englishman after all
Professional quality video
Thanks. It was a very nice summarization of the revolutionary "Aluminium rabbit". I wish a rather more detailed analysis of the "Mig vs Sabre"
Got to see a Mig 15 while stationed at Homestead AFB in 69, the wing commander invited all of us to do a walk around. Our whole shop went together ( F 4E engine shop).was a cuban mig 15
Stalin asked, “Who would be stupid enough to give us their jet engine technology?” The answer was, “The British.”
"Who would be stupid enough to just let some J's steal the atomic bomb plans and give them to us?" -Stalin
"The Americans."
A British Labour government to be exact !
And who else would they have even got jet engines from? Can you list off all the nations with successful jet engine development programs in the late 40s that the Soviets could have asked for jet engines? There was Britain and the US, and Britain was ahead of the US for a while. So who else would they ask?
From the point of view of the UK government in 1947/8 selling the nene to the Soviets was a sound idea. The Nene was an old engine developed during the war as a quick way to increase the power of jet engines but as a centrifugal flow engine was seen as a dead end. It wasn’t used in any current or planned strategic RAF requirements which were all planned to use engines in development from axial flow designs. So the engine was already listed for export and licensed production. It was used in several US designs in the period and through into the late 50’s. So while a substantial improvement on anything the Soviets had it wasn’t seen as crucial by the UK.
Secondly the Soviets weren’t viewed by the Labour government as implacably hostile. The Cold War was yet to really get going and we had been allies with the Soviets for longer than the US during WWII. So selling them an obsolete jet engine isn’t a big stretch there.
Finally the government needed the money and the Soviets were prepared to pay top rubles for it. The UK needed the cash, particularly from a source the US couldn’t squeeze. There was a lot of passive aggression coming from the US towards a UK government seen by the Macarthyites as virtually communist, which had reneged on wartime tech sharing agreements and was using war time loans as leverage to limit British freedom of action.
If the US didn’t want British tech (in this area in advance of US capabilities) in Soviet hands they should have listened to Keynes at Breton Woods.
Now They just give cutting edge tech to 🇺🇦 where it's captured without all the hassle of begging for a handout. Now pretty much all nato weapons and tech are both Useless due to Countermeasures as well as reverse engineered and introduced into their existing systems.
Well, there you go! Everything you wanted to know about the MiG-15 but didn't know where to begin. Most informative.
"Incompetence" No I think a Labour politician just liked the Soviets and wanted to see them succeed over the Americans.
LOL, so not incompetence, but idiocy.
@@srsmopar3808not incompetence, not idiocy. Malice.
The 262 wing sweep had nothing to do with Mach performance. It was to place the center of lift in a favorable location relative to the center of gravity.
That’s an old myth, Richard, it was the other way around, they only used moderate sweep on the 262 in order to keep the centre of gravity forward! The Germans had three supersonic wind tunnels since the thirties, the allies none till after the war. Sadly, the Germans were years ahead in many areas. As Capt Eric Brown said, ‘more advanced than we were.‘
Excellent historic analysis of the MIG 15/Bis. A great attention to Soviet aeronautic history is made by the author of the video. Keep 'em coming!
Considering the time and the competition, you HAVE to respect the MiG-15. It was ahead of what the British could make even when it was their engine!
It was better than almost all the US fighters opposed to it, even if they were more refined. In a sense, it was like the Mitsubishi Zero-Sen.
One of the best ever . So beautifully balanced . Yes with issues , but still if flown properly just a great plane . From a REAL pilot who has seen the Mig up close , but never flew one .
WOW! This is by far the best detailed documentary I've ever seen!💜👏👏👏👍👍👍👍
Can' t wait for your MiG - 17 video!
"What do you mean they BLEW IT UP?!!! WHAT THE HELL IS AN ALUMINUM FALCON???!!!" -Emporer Palpatine to Darth Vader, Robot Chicken
Very informative video and a soothing voice. I have trouble going to sleep. I workout in the evening hoping I will get so tired that I may fall asleep. One trick that worked for me is turning of the lights and listening to documentaries or audio books, reminds me of my dad reading stories for me. This video goes into that list.
Doesn't working out just get you more wide awake and your adrenaline going? I get tired if I sit around. Although thank God I don't have any problem falling asleep. Once in a great while I will, and it drives me nuts. I feel like insomnia is a life of torment, I feel bad for people who suffer from that.
@@justforever96 You have to control your mind and calm down. That will bring down the excitement level. You do all the sets calmly, smoothly, you push your reps to failure and then you end the workout with stretching, yoga if possible. That will do the trick.
Thanks for this video. This being the first model aircraft that I built, I always felt this aircraft was beautiful.
The Ruskies are a bit crude in their approach to things, but perhaps that is part off such a huge and diverse land !,but what has always amazed me is they make things work for them even if it is not always state off the art, and they have developed some real no frills no fuss weapons systems that got the job done!
Great vid mate.
Very well done.
Tons of good info here.
Thanks!
Kudos. Excellent episode. Excellent source videos.
I don't get it why this channel doesn't have at least five times the number of subscribers.
Not as many of us left who will watch anything in black & white regardless of the subject matter.
There are ... aspects ... of this video that aren't favoured by the Almighty Algorithm.
This is by far the best Fightet jet channel on youtube, great work
Thank you!
I can watch & listen to this, over & over. Thankyou.
An excellent video on this Mig-15. Thanks much for your good work.
Best report ever on the Mig-15, which was the realization of an earlier German design of Kurt Tank et al.
Migs.. Might... Migs... Thank you, keep up the great work.
Intro is very interesting to me. Because the view of the MiG-15 I grew up with (child of the cold war) was that it was great. It was the the first thing that made the west feel the USSR could real compete and surpass the west on a technological level
Along with the Soviet T-10 heavy tank.....
@@RobertWilliams-us4kwehhh the T 10 was alright. I'd say the T 54 or T64.
I have to disagree with your opinion regarding Mig 15's looks. In my opinion, it is a beautiful plane - especially when viewed from a distance.
Being a Combat Vet I'd much rather Ugly and Effective over Beautiful and Useless as Tits on a Bull.
What a great exploration of the Mig 15. Well done sir!
I used to play a great game called Mig Alley on pc without knowing anything about the plane. Fascinating video, thank you.
The mig-15 in dcs is such a fun aircraft to learn and fly. I know people say it looks agricultural but to me it’s a great looking plane.
Excellent video content and patiently waiting for more.
Best aviation channel of 2023. I hope your format doesn't change much (at all?) for 2024. Thanks for the great vids!
Great vid. These early planes so interesting. No 30 year development cycles like now. Obsolete in under a decade. The accident rates that would stagger people now. It was a real era ❤
Thank you. I was riveted to the screen the entire time. Now far and away my favourite aircraft video source.
Great vid spoiled slightly by TH-cam jamming in ads every 5 minutes! Still enjoyed it though.
No need to apologize for England's sale of the Rolls Royce engine to the Soviets. In retrospect imagine what chaos the world would have been thrust had both sides of the cold war not been relatively equal in terms of capabilities. The Cold War was a dangerous time of balances, it seems likely that the world would have seen even more bloodshed if that balance had been less equal.
Best I’ve ever seen on the Mig-15. I wish someone would do similar on the 1954 RB-47 Soviet overflight where a number of Mig-17s failed to shoot it down.
excellent work and a real deep dive into the life of the Mig 15 👍👍👍
FYI the aircraft at 1’39” is not a MiG. It is a Lavochkin La 15. Note the shoulder mounted wing.
It is also quite the coincidence that the Panther and Mig 15 in that 1st jet fight were both powered by versions of the Rolls Royce Nene!
Honestly I think these were better looking than the mig -21s although less advanced
Very enjoyable video on the MiG-15 makes a nice change from watching the old Wings of the Red star or Wings of Russia episode on the subject, this is my favourite fighter to take for a spin on DCS.
One of the most beautiful aircraft ever made
Excellent, as are all your videos. Ex-military pilot here, and your work is Sierra Hotel.
Possibly my favorite youtube channel for the moment
Yep, during the Korean war it was a MiG-15 fighter jet flown by a PLAAF Chinese pilot that shot down and killed a USAF American ace pilot George Andrew Davis Jr who was flying a F-86 Sabre.
Where can I give you money? I would legitimately give you $10 for this. Extremely high quality; demystifies differences between historical record and propaganda; plenty of historical media used to SHOW what was being discussed; and of course, the litany of non-English sources that must have been used. This and your series on the development of the Soviet AAM’s are resources I would have killed for doing my own research a couple years ago. A++ 👍
I remember reading Chuck Yeager's autobiography about when he was attached to a diplomatic mission to the USSR and got into discussions with a soviet test pilot (I think) about the Mig 15 and he was asked if he had spun the aeroplane, he replied "yes" to the amazement of the soviets as they had been instructed NEVER to attempt a spin or recovery, standard procedure was to punch out.
Good informative vid. Thank you!
What a great looking air craft .
Excellent documentary on a very important aircraft.
Scholarly, and with wit!
Very informative video, good job!
Another masterpiece episode. These are of broadcast TV quality (meant as a compliment)!
Your content is amazing. I don't know if the same person does the research and narrates... but Holy Crap, both are outstanding!
Wow! Never realised Ta 183 reached prototype stage and based on this Mig 15 TH-cam I am subscribed Sir
great work, and well narrated.
Thank you very much for your great effort. An impressive and detailed and effort calmly presented with no noticeable bias. Indeed I am impressed by your research and balance of opinion. Please keep up your great work. The MIG-15 is possibly and probably an underrated aircraft but one that cannot be ignored. The British contribution unfortunately to Soviet jet engine development was a bit of a home goal or two or three or ...
This is the definition of good content in the military history niche. Thanks for posting, Liked and shared.
I would have wanted four 23mm guns without the 37mm.
I've often had the same analogy regarding the replacement of the N-37 with at least one additional NR-23 and more ammo, once it was appreciated that although good for killing bombers (as the MiG-15 was intended from conception), the reality was, in the air superiority role of fighter-on fighter-combat, the N-37 was a disadvantage to the MiG-15.
It was much easier to kill a bomber with 37mm shells. That's half the reason they made the plane. It wasn't just to go dogfight, the entire purpose of a fighter is to defend against enemy bombers, which are the ones that can actually attack you, or to defend your own bombers so they can attack the enemy. There is a reason the French and British went to 30mm and everyone started using rockets, 20mm class guns just can't kill a bomber easily enough with the closing speeds. And 2 23mms aren't exactly weak armament against a fighter. If you think they didn't need a 37mm to destroy a large bomber, why do they need a third 23mm to destroy a fighter? No one was forcing them to shoot the 37mm at fighters, they had the option of just using the 23s. I like to assume the Soviets weren't total idiots who had no idea what they were doing.
Another interesting video, I hope you'll do one on the Hawker Hunter at some point
my dad always called it the Cocker Cunter
Mig was an interceptor and considering it could only be challenged by a plane designed purely for fighter vs fighter combat (f-86), it's a pretty damn good plane
That cutout on the port wing fence was actually to see the flap actuation indicator! And of course you would only need to see one side, but with undercarriage you would need to see both!
Great video. I likewise believed that the Mig 15's canopy would fog up during transition from high to low altitude, but more likely cause by a faulty heater in one example.
Thanks for your thouroughness.
Excellent video. My only nitpick is that the aircraft identified as a "gunval" Sabre in the video is actually a postwar F-86H. But overall this well researched video certainly puts to bed a lot of western myths about a very important fighter aircraft
So glad I found your channel! Excellent work
Please do a video on the Mig-19 Farmer. Seems like everyone just skips over that bird
Bonjour , merci . Le youtube francophone est tellement pauvre en documentaires aéronautiques , que c'est un réel plaisir de regarder cette vidéo très complète avec de superbes images d'archives .
Au revoir et bonne journée .
Allegedly Staline when hearing about the British jet engine sale to the USSR said something akind to "What kind of fool would sale us his secrets ?"
A very interesting dive into the Mig15, would love to see a F9F Panther sometime in the future.
Very interesting! Great job!
The MiG-15 gets a lot of praise and admiration nowadays. Even the MiG-23 that's been laughed at for so long is getting more and more love.
And then there's the century series which were hyped to no end and every kid had a model of one. They're getting more disliked by the day.
Funny how that goes...
Its decline.
Half of our country joined a cult.
Led by a certified con man.
What a way to start the year. You've been doing great work but this was a step above what you've done. It feels like I just watched an old Discovery Channel Wings episode but better, that is without all the bias they had to contend with as they got information from only government sources.
A very fair take on a legendary airplane, I wonder what the next deep dive you will give us will cover, and when that will come out (I'd expect all videos can't be of this detail).
...but seriously, who thought UTI was a good name for a variant of a plane? #itburns
Someone who didn't name variants based on English ?
Great to get such a balanced view of a Soviet plane, particularly the Mig-15.
As you say, even now it's reputation is distorted by cold war propaganda, and bias.
Interesting take on it, that the Soviets didn't choose to upgrade the plane significantly, but focused on volume production, and then moved quickly on to making the Mig-17 instead.
Agreed. Trying to untwist the differing, tangled and adversarial narratives from the real, physical realities of the era can get to feel like a real chore.
Somewhere between the version that one side tells, and the version that the _other_ side tells, is the real story of the plane.
In today's post-fact world, a truly unbiased presentation is a pretty rare thing - this was *_really_* well done.
Yo, what a rare piece of documentary about a forgotten fighter of a forgotten nation.
Very interesting; thank you!
It must have been absolutely awesome to be the guys that went from piston to jet?
Hell of introduction man! Thanks for sharing :)