[Note: For previous posts in this series, click here: 1 2 3 4]

[Alas, all good things must come to an end. Since posting Part IV of my series on the Russian Air Force Museum at Monino, I have returned home from Moscow. My nearly month-and-a-half long stay was, by any measure, a success. I gathered a great deal of material on my next long-term research project, caught up with old friends, made some new ones, and had a great time.

I’ll be spending the upcoming months reading and writing about the materials I gathered in the archives. In the meantime, however, I want to wrap up the “field guide” to the Monino museum that I began at the end of last month. In this, the penultimate post in the series, we take a look at the Soviet Union’s first jet fighters as well as some really big airplanes.]

Directly across from the Lavochkin group and extending along the entire opposite side of the walkway is a long line of planes produced by the Mikoyan-Gurevich OKB

Aircraft of the Mikoyan-Gurevich OKB

Named in recognition of the contributions of its two leading constructors (Artem Ivanovich Mikoyan and Mikhail Iosifovich Gurevich), the Mikoyan-Gurevich OKB has been designing and producing military aircraft since its foundation in December 1939. As with the Lavochkin OKB, the bureau’s underperforming first effort (the MiG-1) ultimately served as the platform for a later more successful plane, the MiG-3 [discussed in Part III of this series]. But it was only in the decade or so that followed 1945 that Mikoyan-Gurevich fully emerged as one of the world’s most well-known airplane manufacturers.

Among the bureau’s numerous claims to fame was its success in constructing the MiG-9, the USSR’s first turbojet airplane. The MiG-9 was made possible thanks to the vast amount of “trophy technology” that the Red Army gathered during its post-War occupation of Germany. Particularly important were two captured BMW 003 engines that powered the aircraft prototype. (The Soviets would renamed these RD-20 engines once they began producing them serially).

The USSR officially entered the jet age with the first test flight of the MiG-9 on 24 April 1946. However, the ensuing hasty effort to construct and deploy large numbers of the new planes posed serious challenges to state and industrial officials. As had been the case in the 1930s, Soviet leaders found themselves hamstrung by the country’s insufficient infrastructure. Inadequate maintenance and repair facilities, a lack of qualified turbojet mechanics, and poor navigational and communication resources were but three major problems. In addition, the country’s hundreds of airfields proved utterly unsuited to the needs of the jet age. Too easily and too often, small pebbles and clumps of dirt were sucked up from the runways’ earthen surfaces into the turbojet intakes of the new planes, damaging power plants and forcing costly repairs.¹

The mass production of jet aircraft likewise proved to be a major challenge for Soviet industry. As MiG-9s began rolling out of aircraft factories pilots began warning of serious performance problems. A mid-1947 report issued to the Ministry of the Aviation Industry by VVS Marshall Konstantin Vershinin identified 37 recurring defects with the MiG-9 airframe and 14 with the planes’ RD-20 turbojet engine. The Yak-15 jet fighter (developed simultaneously with the MiG-9 was cited for 71 defects while its engine, the RD-10, was plagued by 12). After months of infighting and finger pointing between the VVS and the Ministry, serial production of the MiG-9 was halted in early 1948. In a pattern that would be repeated later during the Cold War, the troublesome planes were eventually pawned off on the USSR’s “fraternal” allies. Between 1950-51, 372 of the 598 MiG-9s in the VVS inventory were handed over to Mao Tse-Tung’s Communist government in China.

In the meantime, the OKB began work on a second jet fighter. Fortunately for Soviet designers, the engine problems that had plagued the MiG-9 were solved courtesy of the British. In 1947, to Stalin’s surprise and delight, the Labor government of Prime Minister Clement Attlee agreed to give the Soviet Union technical information, licensing rights, and copies of the most advanced turbojet engines then in existence: the “Nene” and “Derwent” by Rolls Royce. Tupolev OKB technicians put the engines to excellent use developing the MiG-15.

The second jet fighter to emerge from the Mikoyan-Gurevich OKB more than compensated for the shortcomings of the first. One of the first swept-wing aircraft in history, the MiG-15 proved its worth as soon as it debuted in combat in the skies over Korea in 1950. The plane routinely bested America’s first generation F-80 and F-84 jet aircraft. Only with the arrival en masse of the newer F-86 Sabre was the USAF able to maintain air superiority. Before production of the MiG-15 was finally ended Soviet factories produced more than 12,000 of the planes in seventeen different versions including the MiG-15UTI, a two-seat trainer represented in the VVS Museum’s collection. An additional 6,000 or so MiG-15s were built under license elsewhere, making the MiG-15 the most numerous jet airplane in history.

Beyond (or, “behind”) the MiG group, in a large field separated by a roadway from the rest of the Museum’s planes, is a “sizable” collection of Military-Transport Aircraft.

Military-Transport Aircraft
Although this group of planes is set back away from the central quad, it’s impossible to miss. Here, the VVS Museum has on display some of the USSR’s largest creations. As I discuss at length in DotA, the “colossalist impulse” in aircraft design is one of the distinguishing characteristics of Russian aviation culture. From Igor Sikorsky’s pre-World War I multi-engine giants the Russkii vitiaz’ and Il’ia Muromets to the largest airplane in history, the Antonov An-225 Mriya, very big planes have been a constant feature of Russian aircraft design.

Civilian passenger planes make up a considerable portion of this sub-collection. One of the more important in this regard is the Museum’s Tu-114, a passenger version of the Tupolev OKB’s famed Tu-95 (“Bear”) strategic bomber. The Tu-114 was massive by the day’s standards. It was just over 177 ft. long and possessed a wingspan of 167 ft. Towering nearly five-stories, it was at the time the tallest aircraft ever built. The plane’s four large contra-rotating turboprop propellers were each capable of generating almost 15,000 hp. They enabled the Tu-114 to cruise at 470 mph and attain a top speed near 540 mph. While the airplane typically accommodated up to 160 passengers, it could be reconfigured to allow as many as 220. [By comparison, contemporary Boeing 707s had a maximum capacity of 179 passengers].

Continuing the longstanding Russian tradition of exploiting aviation accomplishments to score propaganda points, Soviet First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev insisted on flying a Tu-114 from Moscow to Washington, DC for his thirteen-day visit to the United States in September 1959. Enamored with the plane’s impressive size (he was delighted to learn that the US didn’t have a ramp tall enough to reach the door) and keenly aware that the plane was the only one in the Soviet inventory that could reach America non-stop, the Communist Party chief was convinced that his arrival aboard the aircraft would serve as spectacular political theater. The trouble was that the plane Khrushchev hoped to take had developed microscopic cracks in an engine following its maiden long-distance flight in May. To allay fears that the plane might not be fully airworthy, designer Andrei Tupolev dispatched his own son on the flight to America. Meanwhile, a team of jet engine specialists was also sent along to monitor the Tu-114’s engines using a specially designed instrument that resembled a cross between a stethoscope and heart monitor. As an added precaution, the KGB dispatched a small armada of trawlers, tankers, and freighters into the Atlantic along the plane’s flight path.² These extra measures proved unnecessary. The Tu-114 carrying Khrushchev made its triumphal landing at Andrews Air Force Base on 15 September.

As big as it is, the Tu-114 looks rather small when measured against the enormous Antonov An-22 turboprop parked nearby. Designed by the Kiev-based Antonov OKB (now officially known as the Antonov Aeronautical Scientific/Technical Complex), the An-22 was as a military-transport built to provide strategic heavy-lifting capabilities over long distances. Antonov designers followed established precedent in devising the mammoth creation. As had been the case in the 1930s with the Tupolev OKB’s famous Maxim Gorky, the An-22 was simply an enlarged version of a previously existing model (the An-12) outfitted with a new (twin) tail. Within two years of its 27 February 1965 debut, the An-22 established more than a dozen world airlift records. The most impressive achievement came in 1967 when an An-22 airlifted 225,000 lbs to an altitude of 25,748 feet. Although production of the An-22 ended in 1974 perhaps as many as two dozen of the planes are believed to remain in service as military transports.

Our virtual tour of the outdoor aircraft collection concludes with a return to the group of planes parked in the middle of the central quad. Rounding the walkway clockwise from the MiG group, one finds a row of planes from the Yakovlev OKB.

Aircraft of the Yakovlev OKB

A pioneering figure from the earliest years of Soviet aviation, Aleksandr Sergeevich Yakovlev first earned famed for his contributions to the establishment, development, and growth of Soviet sport aviation. His first aeronautical creation, the motor-less AVF-10, debuted in 1924 and proved instrumental to the rise of Soviet gliderism and modeling circles. Soon thereafter the constructor turned his attention to building true airplanes. His completed his first, the AIR-1, in 1927. Seven years later (1934) Yakovlev was awarded his own construction bureau. During the Second World War, the Yakovlev OKB emerged as one of the Soviet aviation’s “Big Three” (along with Tupolev and Mikoyan-Gurevich). Ultimately, the design bureau was responsible for as many as two-thirds of the fighters that took part in the War. Later contributions included the USSR’s first all-weather interceptor (Yak-25); its first STOVL aircraft (Yak-38) and a host of training and civilian planes. Today, the Yakovlev design bureau continues to play a vital role in the Russian aviation industry.

The earliest history of Soviet jet aviation is preserved in the form of the Museum’s Yak-17. This aircraft was a modified version of the Yak-15 which debuted just hours after the MiG-9 launched the jet age in Russia. A transitional aircraft itself, the Yak-15 was little more than a jet-powered version of the earlier propeller-driven Yak-3. In a similar fashion, the Yak-17 was an only slightly revised version of its immediate predecessor. Aside from having a reworked tail section, the Yak-17 differed from the Yak-15 in one major respect. Whereas the Yak-15 possessed the tail-down landing gear typical of piston-driven aircraft, the Yak-17 was outfitted with a tricycle system in which the third wheel was placed under the nose. Ultimately, these changes did not drastically improve performance. With the arrival of the superior MiG-15 in late December 1947, the fate of the Yak-17 was sealed. Production was halted after only 430 aircraft had been built. Among these, however, a two-seater variant (the Yak-17UTI) provided essential service as the USSR’s first jet trainer aircraft.

In the final installment of our field guide, we’ll take a look at the contents of the Museum’s hangar devoted to “Unique Flying Machines” and its “History of Russian Aviation” display.

[ For the final installment in this series of posts, click here: 6]

1. Игорь Дроговоз, Воздушный щит страны советов, Минск: Харвест, 2007, 53-55 [↩]
2. William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2003, 422-423 [↩]