Strange Skyfellows
Not long ago, Soviet- made Mikoyan-Gurevich (MiG)-21 jet fighters caught streaking across the skies of southern Maryland would have been cause for alarm—to say the least. But now, with tensions eased between the United States and the former Soviet Union, the U.S. Navy is seizing the opportunity to study the venerable airplane. The Navy’s Test Pilot School at Naval Air Station Patuxent River recently contracted a privately owned MiG-21 on several occasions for Developmental Testing Phase II (DT-II) student final projects. Here, Pax River staff—complete with Soviet- style helmets and oxygen masks for the truly authentic MiG-21 experience—evaluate the performance, advantages, feature peculiarities, and limitations of a two-seat version called the MiG-21U (code-named Mongol) against one of the school’s F/A-18B Hornets.
With an estimated 10,000 MiG-2 Is manufactured since 1957, the aircraft are still in wide use today, having been purchased by or supplied to more than 30 different countries. Considering that few fighter pilots would choose to get slow with a MiG-21, the versatile aircraft remains a viable adversary against today’s modern fighters.
(Condensed from a report by Captain G. A. Bass, USMC, and Lieutenant Commander T. C. Gurney, USN.)