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Specialty Press |
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Mikoyan's Piston-Engined Fighters by Verim Gordon and Keith Dexter |
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Reviewed By John Lester, #36807 |
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Red Star Volume 13 MSRP $29.95 The design bureau of Artyom Mikoyan and Mikhail Gurevich would become synonymous with Soviet airpower during the long years of the Cold War, but it started out as a means of preventing Stalin's displeasure with N.N. Polikarpov from ending work on his Samolyot 'Kh' project at Zavod (Factory) No. 1. In something of a coup by factory management, young Mikoyan (he was 34 at the time) was put in charge of the project at the head of a new Experimental Design Department (OKO); keenly aware of his own inexperience, he insisted that Gurevich be made his principal deputy. Their work led to the I-200 high-altitude fighter prototype, which became the MiG-1 in series production in 1940. The book charts the development of MiG piston-engined aircraft from the I-200 to the I-250/MiG-13 composite-powered fighter. It's divided into 8 chapters. The first five follow the development of the bureau's first successful line, the MiG-1/MiG-3, and the carious experimental versions of the basic design. The next three look at the I-220/MiG-11 line, I-250/MiG-13, and the DIS-200/MiG-5. These chapters are preceded by a short introduction describing the formation of the bureau and followed by line drawings and color profiles of the major types. The text is illustrated with over 200 black and white photos; there are ten pages of line drawings covering the evolution of the !-200 through the mid-production MiG-3, plus 24 portside color profiles, most of which are of I-200/MiG-3 variants. The text is well-researched and provides a fascinating look at little-known (in the West, anyway) aviation programs. It covers the technical and political challenges facing the bureau with equal attention. The prose is a bit stiff, at first - reads as if it was written by someone who learned English as a second language but still thinks in their first. Which is undoubtedly the case. The reader forgets about that by the second chapter. From a modeler's perspective, the book provides a lot of information for those looking for MiG-3 reference material. Photos, including quite a number of wrecked machines, cover most areas of the airframe and the systems incorporated within. Line drawings show the details of the various sub-types, while profiles are provided for many individual airframes. One gripe: there is no scale stated for the drawings. They look to be about 1:50 scale. There is enough material within the covers to arm the interested builder with sufficient information to convert the various kits (ICM, Classic Airframes and Trumpeter in 1/48 and 1/32; I don't do 1/72 but I know there are kits in it) into the sub-types and prototypes presented. If you are interested in aviation
history, this book is a no-brainer, well worth reading. If you are
looking for references for your MiG-3 kit, it's also worth the investment. |
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