Inside The Cockpit - Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15

today we are looking at perhaps one of the most iconic early Jets that were developed in the post-world War two ERA it was a small fast package with heavy firepower and it could wrestle with the very best the West had to offer the mig-15 [Music] hello everyone and welcome back to military aviation history I am your host Bismarck and today we are in Berlin ghetto in the ministère Historical Museum of the Bundys we're taking a look at the Soviet mikoyan-gurevich mig-15 now this jet of course rose to international fame during the Korean War when it was employed amongst others by North Korean forces its battles with the American f-86 sabre have become a source of aviation folklore in a sense and a favorite discussion as well reason enough then to take a closer look at an aircraft that has become a legend nowadays the MiG design bureau is well known after all it produced some of the most prominent jets used by the Soviet Union during the Cold War and it continues to play a role in comparing a V Asian as well just after world war ii however this wasn't the case artyom mccoyryan and mikhail Gurevich had formed the company in 1949 but the only make aircraft of that time that we commonly refer to is the make free and as a high-altitude interceptor the make free really was unconventional for a soviet union that favored low altitude air superiority fighters in the field of aviation however a spark of the unconventional is sometimes just what is required to make a difference and after some experimentation with high speeds design makes stood ready to start thinking about using a new propulsion system that jet engine seeing the developments in Germany of course before the end of the war and the introduction of the first Jets for example in the United Kingdom the Soviet Union turned to their own design boroughs and essentially told them to come up with a competitive jet that could provide an answer to the Western counterparts and really it's a mistake to think that the Soviet Union had not experimented with jet engines up to this point the first turbojet was in the works in early 1941 but that work was interrupted due to the German invasion that very year not to be picked up again until 1944 when the war's end seemed guaranteed yak Olaf at that time known for yak fries and yak nines initially got a better deal in the Soviet Union being supplied with the German humor all four engines but McCowen and Gurevich were not out of the picture yet and seis tune stood at the epicentre of a new exciting era in Soviet aviation the mcnight became the first jet attempt there but one limited by a whole range of problems but hey it was nonetheless promising the main issues that plagued the Soviet designers at the time were well on the one hand a lack of a powerful jet engine and on the other the necessary experience when it came to actually designing jet aircraft which were of course very different to the more orthodox piston aircraft they were fast learners but for now they were lagging behind and now comes an episode in aviation history that really has puzzled many Mikoyan and Klem of the man behind Soviet aircraft engines well they went shopping abroad the question now of course was who would give the Soviet Union a working jet engine with every passing day it became more obvious that East and West were at a standoff politically socially ideologically and militarily surely no one in the West would be happy to pass cutting-edge technology to the Soviets well apparently Britain thought otherwise having already made some deals with other countries for their roles for a stove and one and the Naenae one and two the Soviet Union was just another customer on that list and from a total of 55 engines bought the Soviets themselves successfully reverse engineered their own designs in 1947 make constructed their I 310 prototype known as the s-1 the s2 or the S free followed testing out the design and the engines adding speed brakes improving the cockpit featuring progressive changes to the tail the wings and incorporating the first weapon placements and hard points by 1948 the aircraft was christened and make 15 and mass production was slaughtered to begin in December of that year the first McFee teens were rolling off the factory lines powered by the RD 45 F a copy of the British rolls for his Naenae 2 engine while the Soviet Union had fixed its engine problems courtesy of the United Kingdom the mig-15 still had many problems oftentimes mirroring doe as other countries like Germany and Britain had to overcome themselves a few years prior to this high speed control was difficult the gear was too rough the trim tabs were insufficient the fuel system was problematic battery power was limited pilots didn't like the cockpit button layout and training of course of aviators only comments very sluggishly but these problems they could be overcome and they were overcome relatively quickly and the mick featured many systems also appreciated by the soviet pilots such as improved radio sets and a blind landing system the OSP 48 the progressive changes to the design on the production line very much sort of a soviet-style work method produced some confusion then and even now on the specific marks of aircraft and it was also a very sort of disjoint that cost the procedure to give you an example the cost of a MIG 15 built at number one factories in nowadays Samara cost about four hundred thirty thousand roubles at number 153 factory situated in the middle of nowhere really the cost of a near identical ship was about six hundred fifty thousand rubles now every time a modification was made it had to be sent out to all the relevant factories and today we sometimes make the quick distinctions between the mig-15 and the MIG 50 bits but really of all the mig-15 of offers like for example Gordon identified like 20 different main sub variants and so that gives you sort of an idea how much of these progressive changes and the numbers of the different versions out there and that's ignoring the different off shots of other nations such as for example Poland and Czechoslovakia had also produced these machines the UTI make 15 we have here is a bit of a special case mainly because of its appearance right next to the Sabre that we have right there and that makes it look so so very tiny compact but hey these are actually known as midgets in any case it's a general trainer aircraft built trained new pilots and it brought jokes it really does feature the same equipment as a standard - 15 with slightly lighter armament now since the mig-15 also received an ejection seat the Soviet Union decided to purpose built several UTIs into what is sometimes called a trainer catapult ejection seats where they were a novelty really to Soviet pilots and pilots everywhere at the time in the Air Force fear that this lack of confidence that the pilots had in the ejection seat would provide a mental obstacle that would prevent a pilot from blasting himself out of the aircraft in an emergency and to overcome this the Air Force turns to a very hands-on solution touring the different fighter squadron of UTIs explaining the ejection seat mechanic and then getting a few volunteers to try mmm out the seat in question at that point had a reduced charge by the way to provide a more smooth ejection and the confidence in this new equipment amongst the pilots rose sneaky very sneaky the mig-15 was officially introduced in 1949 and would see a large scale production order initially built in three different factories it was soon built in about six other factories as well and these alone about 13,000 were build and that is deep only the domestic production in Poland Czechoslovakia and China forever models were produced and in the future I aim to make a video about those specific aircraft - but first we need to get our hands on them so for now back to the mig-15 the aircraft is most prominently remembered for its role in the Korean War and we will come to that in just a second but it serves to look at the mixed life from a macro lens first built from 1948 and introduced in 1949 it was put into operational service remarkably quickly really with the first combat-ready squadrons appearing in 1950 by 52 or make 15 units were already they had already appeared on parades were deployed in East Germany in Poland and of course they also formed part of the Soviet Union's acrobatics the first trial by fire came in early 1950 the Korean War was still a few months away when communist China asked Soviet assistance encountering the air raids by nationalist China now largely confined through the island of Taiwan there wasn't really much to do but the Soviet pilots court free kills regardless one of them being a communist Chinese flow on to the left - - a mistaken for a Mitchell b-25 bomber but the pilots did earn sort of their first taste of jet combat experience and the mig-15 would enter in into the Korean War in November 1950 after the initial North Korean offensive had been pushed all the way back to the Yellow River the USSR and China jumped into action by providing assistance on a ground and in the sky for the mig-15 the unit sent to Korea were often meant to go to the European theater before death does this relocation did actually cause many of the initial plans that the Soviet Union had to be pushed back so with pilots often flew make 15 that were actually painted in North Korean colors so as to hide their involvement they were also not allowed to cross a line between Pyongyang and wolfson or were allowed to fly over the sea but word soon they'd get out the Russians or the Soviets rather were flying over Korea the pilots were also required to learn some Chinese or Korean so as to mask their origin on the radios and actually this seemed to go remarkably well until they got into contact with the enemy and one pilot actually recalls that the broken Karim that I spoke at that time quickly became interjected with Russian swearing so the order to only speak in Korean or in Chinese was very quickly withdrawn as being completely unrealistic while they undertook combat duties - of the initially free sent air divisions took on training duties for the Chinese and Korean pilots they were would to be equipped with these aircraft these pilots and were also very quickly pushed into the fighting and operated without the same sort of restrictions that the Soviet pilots had this is also why the combat record of the mig-15 is so spotty over Korea when US jets like the f-86 sabre ran into Soviet pilots the fighting was usually fairly balanced given the advantage to individual skill or to whomever saw the offer first against Chinese and North Korean pilots this was often very different again it's a matter of skill context and a fair bit of luck as well so when trying to look at air to kill to a loss ratios to find the battery aircraft amongst these tools you'll find yourself staring down the wrong metric nowadays we often remember that fight between the mig-15 and the newer f-86s but it also serves mentioning that initially the mix were fighting against f50 ones F 84th and F 80s and there's always a bit of give and take on the whole but against these older machines this make was definitely superior to this day we're not really sure about the actual victories scored in Korea each side sort of claiming their own numbers both in internal documents and then of course those broadcaster to the outside one of the very first battles for example between Sabres and mix exemplifies this perfectly the u.s. claims six shot down mix two one lost f-86 the Soviets claimed free Sabres to to mix generally the losses acknowledged on each sides are more reliable thicker so perhaps in this instant it was us - USSR won we can speculate how all we want however and we will still be here in three weeks time eventually the Soviet mig-15s were actually pulled back quite substantially for more training purposes the Soviets acknowledged that the Sabre was a worthy opponent and that training would provide the edge pilots that had already fought in Korea we're now parting their experience onto the young ones coming up the mig-15 itself had become subject of quite a lot of interest termed small yet so that a soldier's aircraft the western air forces try to get their hands on one of these and managed actually to do so well with a few crash-landed ones but it only got a working one when a Polish pilot affected to Denmark two weeks after the Korean War ended a North Korean pilot also defected cashing in a reward of ten thousand dollars which he apparently didn't even know existed while we can debate about the relative qualities of the respective planes the reality is that the pilots made the best use of what they had and could they get their hands on in the end the outcome of any engagement really mattered more on the skill than any hard performance stats you might find on a piece of paper the mig-15 statement service for a considerable amount of time and was used by a large number of countries most notably of course those of the warship act here we have an East German one countries in the Middle East and the odd outliers like Finland and surprisingly why are the Chinese license-built Chen yang also the United States it was later improved with the mix 17 and so redesign with the make 19 I was used as a fighter bomber and auxiliary air asset and in the new versions that also saw service in much later conflicts like the Vietnam War for example the mig-15 is a single-engine fighter built in a semi Moonrock all-metal fashioned out of duralumin the plane is built in two sections separated at frame 13 to allow easier engine maintenance a cantilever mid wing monoplane design is swept at 47 degrees featuring hydraulically accentuated flaps and two boundary layer fences that you can see on each wing to assist plane control and stall characteristics the aircraft has a length of 10.1 meters it spans 10 meters and it stands at three point seven meters empty weight is around about 3,600 kilograms with a maximum loaded weight of around about 5,000 kilograms and it is powered by a single claim of bk1 a engine producing 6000 pounds of thrust allowing it to reach a maximum speed of around about 1070 kilometres an hour and it does feature a heavy armament 137 we millimeter noodleman cannon on the starboard side holding 40 rounds and two port side 23 millimeter noodleman Riccar and our 20 freeze holding 80 rounds each now that's not a lot of shots but if they hit they hit and in its later of strike rolls the aircraft was also armed with bombs and rockets and hard points and of course it could also use drop tanks so what we're going to do now is a little bit of a walk around essentially emulating the pre-flight check that a pilot would do before taking off and then make 15 so you approach the aircraft or reform do you check the general alignment of the wings that nothing is wrong there you check the cover on top of it's probably last you checked out the cameras that obstructed obviously the intake should be clear you then move around toward the starboard side you check the gear you make sure that the pressure tire pressure is correct you look that there is no leaks in the end the hydraulics nothing is you know brought obviously broken check the covers as well once you're satisfied with that you move on check the antenna check that the boundary layers are good this little pin that's sticking out of the wing that actually shows you here is deployed it's a nice little indication for the pilot should the instrument in the cockpit fail he can just look outside and you know he sees whether the gear is deployed or not in any case we move further along making sure that all the covers are closed the pitot tube should at that point also be cleared so usually there's a cover this can now be taken off move along the wing nothing's instructing the navigational light the starboard wing moving forward making sure that the wing is nice and clear you then have the elder ones you make sure that there is a good movement on those nothing is obstructing them same thing of the of the flaps there obviously now retracted as they would also be on preflight check you just make sure there is no obstruction nothing covering maybe the L one together of the flaps you make a second check also on the gear here and control X and the phenomics they're also looking at E we are covers you go back up making sure that all the covers that you see on the aircraft are fine for example over here that would be housing part of the gyrocompass you'd also check the flare dispenser white red green and yellow coming down here this is of course the air brake you see it's slightly extended now just making sure nothing is blocking it that there will be free movement once you need them going over you check the rubber however that is working fine you also check the elevator study up on top just making sure again free movement nothing is obstructing doors you go further on make sure that the engine outlet is clear second air brake this time on the port side make sure that out is fine as well cover cover cover just checking goes again making sure then that the flaps and the ailerons on this wing are also properly moving there's another cover right here also for the hydraulics you make another check on the on the gear covers here and you make a check on the wheels again tire pressures properly nothing is leaking nothing is broken so we go further along the wing just general expect an inspection again navigation guides must be clear a little bit of acrobatics now as we go below the wing of the Canadair Sabre watch the pitot tube here on the port wing we will also check the landing light which is currently retracted and we move up we look here you can actually see here how the entry blockages are for the canopy anyway move up front again at this point we would also look at the cannons make sure that any blockages of them are taking off sometimes out of the ground crew takes that off just before a takeoff you'll actually find this little bar here on the cartridge it's lit that just prevents the cart users from flying out into the port wing since this is the UT I make 15 you only see one port installed gun right there and that's essentially our port our pre-flight check completed at this point I can board the aircraft startup of the sequence make sure that the ground crew is obviously giving me an assistance there and off I go the mig-15 might not have been the first soviet jet but it certainly is the most memorable one from that early age of jet aviation and its story is one of much as clever engineering as it is of scheming politics and while it might present itself as a small diminutive package it certainly had quite the punch so I hope that you enjoyed today's episode and if you did please consider supporting us on patreon to allow us to help fund these shoots and you will also get exclusive behind-the-scenes footage from these machines and chutes and I want to thank the military story Museum here in Berlin ghetto for allowing us to get close with this aircraft and if you want to visit them check out the link down below as well so as always have a great day good hunting and see you in the sky just click on one of these

Channel: Military Aviation History

Views: 516,216

Rating: 4.7679791 out of 5

Keywords: MiG, 15, jet, Korea, MiG Alley, F86, Sabre, UTI, Soviet, History, education, avgeek, aviation

Id: 2XD6seQbVsg

Length: 20min 46sec (1246 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 19 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/omar1848liberal]

I’m surprised by how small it is

[u/bigbob7567]

Is this at Gatow?