To kick us off, I’m at Edwards Air Force Base in California’s Mojave Desert, with a reincarnation of the same plane that Chuck Yeager crashed trying to set a new altitude record here in 1963.

The story of the F-104 begins in the skies over Korea, where U.S. pilots in F-86 Sabres battled MiG-15s, many of them secretly flown by Russian pilots. While the F-86 held its own, pilots reported that they wanted a jet fighter that could fly faster and higher than the MiG. The challenge was taken up by Kelly Johnson, the famous head of Lockheed’s Skunk Works, who designed many of the company’s most groundbreaking planes, including the L-10 Electra and P-38 Lighting, and later the U-2 and SR-71 Blackbird spy planes.

The F-104 Starfighter would be propelled by a single General Electric J79 jet engine, an absolute monster that produced over 14,000 pounds of thrust. The main wings of the F-104 were stubby, extremely thin, and tilted downward (anhedral) as a counter to the T-tail behind. The forward edges of the wings were so sharp they created a safety hazard to ground crew—accidentally bang into them, and they could cut like a knife.

When flying at high angles of attack, the wings could potentially mask the T-tail from the airflow, rendering the elevators useless and making it impossible to pitch down to recover—something I learned I really had to watch out for.

The cockpit is all analog gauges. The most important are the artificial horizon to the middle right, the altimeter to the middle left, and the airspeed indicator just above it. The engine gauges to the far right are important too, because this thing is easy to overheat.

The throttle to the left is pretty simple. Just next to it is the level for flaps. There’s only one stage of flaps, about 10 degrees, for takeoff and landing.

The first F-104 prototype took to the skies in March 1954 at Edwards AFB and quickly earned its reputation as a “missile with a man on it.” In the first few months, the F-104 set numerous altitude and speed records, becoming the first jet fighter to exceed Mach 2.

But it also soon revealed a number of flaws and limitations that would plague it throughout its career. First, while it was extremely fast, it had a very wide turning radius, which made it unsuitable for close-in dogfighting. This became evident when I made a 180-degree turn to land and kept way overshooting the runway.

Second, when you have the engine on full throttle, it’s very easy for the compressor to stall and cause the engine to flame out. This happened several times, throwing me violently forward in the cockpit. I was high enough, so I could restart.

Finally, there’s angle of attack, the angle at which the wing meets the air. The higher that angle, the more lift. But beyond a certain point the wing will stall and cease providing any lift at all. The angle of attack indicator is the dial to the far right. It’s on “3” here. When it goes to “5” or more, the stick starts shaking to warn me. And if it goes into the red, the stick will automatically push forward, causing the airplane to lurch nose down.

At first, I found it a challenge to manage the angle of attack at speeds below 200 knots. In fact, that’s why the F-104 was known for having to land at a relatively fast speed. In fact, this was the result of my first attempt to land it. Needless to say, it was a closed-casket funeral.

For all these reasons, the F-104 was one of the first jet fighters to feature an ejection seat. Pull the cord down between my legs and away we go. F-104 pilots wore spurs, which clipped into wires that, when they ejected, pulled their legs in from the rudder pedals so they wouldn’t get ripped off. The pilots loved these because when they walked around it made them look and feel like cowboys.

The problem was the first explosive charges for the F-104’s ejection seat couldn’t propel the pilot above the oncoming T-tail. So the pilot was ejected downward out the bottom of the fuselage. Ejecting downward at high altitudes wasn’t a problem, but it became deadly at low altitudes on final approach. The ejection would slam you right into the ground before the parachute could open. Eventually this was changed, and new explosive charges were rigged to blow off the canopy and eject the pilot skyward, which has remained the practice ever since.

The F-104 is probably most familiar from the scene in the 1983 film The Right Stuff, where Yeager, played by Sam Shepard, tries to fly one to the edge of space and ends up losing control and ejecting just before it crashes. This was a real event, and the airplane he flew (NF-756) was actually an experimental version of the F-104 with a rocket (not depicted) attached to the tail, providing an additional boost to reach maximum altitude.

Yeager actually began his run level at 40,000 feet to build up speed to Mach 2.2 before starting his climb. Then he nosed up 45 degrees or more and shot for the sky. At 78,000 feet he shut off the main engine and let the tail rocket propel him higher. 

In the movie, it makes it look like the problem was that his engine failed. In fact, that wasn’t the issue. The trouble was that around 107,000 feet for some reason the elevators became locked, and he couldn’t nose down as he lost speed. Unable to regain speed by nosing back down, the airplane went into a flat spin, and Yeager ultimately had to eject. The seat hit him and caused the rubber in his helmet to catch fire, burning his face and one of his fingers badly, but he survived.

I don’t have an extra tail rocket and was still learning the ropes with the finicky engine, so the highest I was able to go in the F-104 was to about 50,000 feet. The view was pretty wild, though. The fastest I could get the F-104 on my first flight was Mach 1.4. Though I think with a little practice I could probably figure out how to get past Mach 2.

Time to come back down to earth and try to land right this time. Barreling in at 200 knots is a little unnerving (a Cessna lands at about 60 knots, a Boeing 737 at about 130). Once you do touch down, the F-104 has a parachute you can deploy to help slow you down in time before you run out of runway. Later versions of the F-104 also featured a tailhook that could catch wires on certain airfields to come to a halt. Either way, even in the sim you definitely feel being slammed forward as you decelerate.

The F-104 was initially deployed as a high-speed interceptor and played a key deterrent role in the 1958 Taiwan Straits Crisis, the 1961 Berlin Wall Crisis, and the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. But the limitations of the F-104 in an actual combat role became evident during the Vietnam War, which is why I’m at the giant U.S. airbase at Da Nang (now a civilian airport, VVDN).

One big drawback was limited range. The F-104 guzzled fuel and would quickly run out if it didn’t carry an array of extra tanks on its wings to supplement. The jet was designed to intercept and shoot down other fighters. But there were few enemy fighters that posed a direct threat in the skies over Vietnam. As a result, the F-104 scored zero direct air-to-air kills in almost 3,000 sorties during the Vietnam War, though several were lost due to accidents and enemy fire (one was reported shot down by a Chinese fighter jet after straying into China airspace).

It can be argued that F-104 Starfighters performed their job well. By patrolling the skies, they deterred North Vietnamese fighter jets, which largely avoided them, ensuring the safety of other U.S. aircraft involved in providing close-air support to troops fighting on the ground. Nevertheless, the F-104 was soon phased out of the U.S. Air Force, replaced by other jets such as the F-4 Phantom which, while not as fast, could serve in a more versatile range of roles, from dogfighting to bombing to landing on aircraft carriers.

That was hardly the end of the F-104, however. Just as its life with the Air Force was ending, it gained popularity in export markets, including the American-recognized Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan. On January 13, 1967, four Republic of China Air Force Starfighters engaged a formation of People’s Liberation Army Air Force MiG-19s  over the island of Kinmen (Quemoy) just off the coast of mainland China. One F-104 did not return to base and was presumably shot down. But two Taiwanese pilots each shot down a MiG-19.

Johnson said this aerial battle illustrated both the strengths and weaknesses of the fighter he designed for Lockheed. It had the advantage in speed and altitude but could not turn with the MiGs. This particular airplane (4344) survived and remains on display at the ROC Air Force Museum in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.

Several other countries also adopted the F-104 in the mid-1960s. One of the most important was Canada, which acquired a license from Lockheed to produce it domestically as the CF-104. This CF-104 being refueled belongs to the 3rd Fighter Wing once based at Zweibrücken in southwest Germany.

At the time, Canada actually had the fourth-largest air force in the world, with four bases in Western Europe, two in France, and two (including Zweibrücken) in what was then West Germany. The Canadian CF-104s at all four bases replaced F-86 Sabres and took on two special missions, with the first being aerial reconnaissance.

The second mission— a unique one—was a nuclear strike. The Canadian CF-104s carried a single, compact nuclear bomb under its fuselage, like a drop-tank, which unfortunately I’m not able to depict. In wartime, the job of the Canadian CF-104s was to take off and fly straight to targets inside the former Soviet Union and drop their nuclear load.

Even with wingtip fuel tanks, the CF-104s didn’t have the range to fly to Russia and back. The pilot would be expected to bail out somewhere near the target and hide until the war ended. That’s a pretty rough assignment. I’m glad I’m not that guy and that this guy never actually had to perform his mission. Canada operated the CF-104 for 25 years from 1962-1987, when it was replaced by the F-18 Hornet.

Like many other countries that flew the Starfighter, Canada saw a very high accident rate—110 major accidents and 37 fatalities—which gained it the nickname “The Widow Maker.” But the country that ordered the largest number of export F-104s, and had the highest accident rate, was West Germany.

The Starfighter we’re looking at is a little different. It’s a two-seat TF-104 used as a trainer. When countries deployed the F-104, they typically bought a few TF-104s as part of the package. This TF-104 belongs to JaboG 34, a fighter-bomber squadron once based at Memmingerberg in Bavaria and now a civilian airport.

Starting in 1960, the Germans bought 915 Starfighters, 35 percent of all F-104s ever produced, as part of a plan to quickly ramp up their contribution to NATO’s fighting force. Of these 915 planes, 292 (almost one-third) were destroyed in accidents and 116 pilots were killed. At one point, there was an accident happening almost every week.

This was the worst safety record of any country operating the F-104. Why was it so bad? There are several reasons that probably contributed. First, many pilots in the new Luftwaffe were inexperienced, with only a few older veterans signing on who had flown in World War II. Many of the F-104 problems persisted: engines flaming out, stalling at high speeds, T-tail elevators becoming ineffective, etc. Even at its best, the Starfighter was considered an unforgiving aircraft. In the hands of an inexperienced pilot, this could be deadly.

Second, to save money, the Germans made the F-104 their one and only type of airplane. Originally designed as a high-altitude interceptor, they had it play a wide variety of roles, including low-altitude combat support bomber. This role led to many accidents where pilots couldn’t pull up fast enough from a dive and crashed.

Third, many German pilots received their F-104 training in the American Southwest, where the weather was clear and ideal. When they came back to Europe, they found themselves operating in poor weather conditions close to the ground. Many accidents were weather related.

Finally, there’s that ejector seat. Many German pilots trained on F-104s with a downward ejecting seat. They learned to adapt at low altitude by turning the airplane upside down before ejecting, so they would be propelled away from the ground. By the time the Germans received their planes, though, many had been changed to upward ejecting seats. But by force of habit, some pilots would still turn upside down before ejecting at low altitude and…well, you know.

If this ongoing bloodbath wasn’t enough, West Germany’s F-104 purchases became the center of a major bribery scandal. In the 1970s, several German politicians, including the defense minister, were accused of taking multimillion-dollar bribes from Lockheed to choose the F-104 over its rivals. Similar charges were made against Lockheed in other countries, involving the F-104 and other aircraft.

For all its flaws, the West German Luftwaffe continued to rely on the F-104 as its primary warbird until it was replaced by the Panavia Tornado in the 1980s. British pilot Eric Brown said the F-104 was an airplane that “has to be flown every inch of the way.” The U.S. required pilots to have 1,500 flight hours before climbing into the F-104. German pilots typically had 400—and it showed.

Now if all of this makes you want to jump into a F-104 and try it out, you may be in luck. An outfit called Starfighters Inc. offers a two-day program of flight training in one out of Kennedy Space Center in Florida for $29,900. Its small fleet of former Canadian TF-104s operates out of a hangar at the space shuttle landing facility. If you have that kind of money lying around, all you need is a private pilot certificate, medical certificate, be within certain maximum height and weight limits, and be able to pass a security check to get on-site.

For what you’re paying, I certainly hope they let you go Mach 2. I don’t have that kind of coin, but at least in the sim I can fly over Kennedy Space Center and wave hello to Elon Musk. So, yeah, your dreams can come true and it can happen to you—if money is no object. In the meantime, the rest of us will have to make do with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this feature on the F-104 Starfighter and its interesting history. And maybe at least one of you will go to Florida and fly one. Good luck!

If you’d like to see a version of this article with more historical photos and screenshots, you can check out my original post here.

This story was told utilizing the Sim Skunk Works TF-104G and FRF-104G add-ons to Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, along with liveries and sceneries produced by fellow users and shared on flightsim.to for free.

The post Exploring the Checkered History of the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

The MiG-21 was produced by the Soviet state design bureau led by Artem Mikoyan and Mikhail Gurevich. Founded in 1939, the bureau achieved modest success during World War II, but broke through as a leading designer of jet fighters with the swept-wing MiG-15, which contended with U.S. aircraft for control of the skies during the Korean War.

However, by the mid-1950s the U.S. was introducing a new, second generation of jet fighters—exemplified by the F-104 Starfighter, capable of exceeding speeds of Mach 2. The MiG-21, introduced in 1959, was the Soviet response. Like the F-104, it was essentially a big jet engine with a cockpit strapped on top. The powerplant, in this case, was a single Tumansky R-25, capable of producing more than 9,000 pounds of thrust at full throttle, and up to 21,825 pounds with afterburner. The protrusion over the engine nozzle contains the parachute that can be deployed to slow the MiG-21 on landing.

The most recognizable feature of the MiG-21 was the engine air intake on the nose, covered by a “shock cone.” The shock cone’s purpose was to slow the air entering the intake to maximize efficiency, and it could be extended out at higher speeds or retracted at lower speeds. The spear-like boom projecting from the nose carries the atmospheric sensors for air pressure, airspeed, and angle of attack out in front, before the airflow is disrupted by the airplane itself.

To reduce drag and increase speed, the MiG-21 had a triangular-shaped delta wing, which earned it the Russian nickname “balalaika”, after the stringed folk instrument. The Poles called it the “pencil” because of its long, thin fuselage.

The MiG-21 was intended primarily as an aerial interceptor, so I’ve loaded it for this session with K-13 air-to-air heat seeking missiles, two under each wing. The story behind them is an interesting one.

In 1958, a Taiwanese F-86 Sabre fired an AIM-9 Sidewinder missile at a Red Chinese MiG-17 over the Taiwan Straits. It failed to explode, and was handed over to the Russians, who reversed engineered it. The K-13, dubbed “Atoll” by NATO, was a direct knockoff. The missiles were not yet available when the MiG-21 was first unveiled, so it was equipped with a 23mm cannon attached to its belly. As we shall see, this gun proved critical to its success.

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Next to the gun, on either side, are speed brakes, panels that can be lowered to slow the airplane down quickly when needed. The wheel wells also serve as a maintenance hatch for accessing many of the MiG-21s critical systems. A little white bottle contains compressed air for operating the landing gear brakes. Pilots had to use it sparingly; once it ran out, no brakes.

To give the smallish flaps greater lift, compressed air from the engines is released over their upper surface. Faster airflow equals lower pressure equals greater lift. “Blown flaps” like these, also used on the F-104, are a rarity because they are complex to maintain and were useless in an engine failure.

The cockpit of the MiG-21 is a bit of a confusing jumble, and that’s before I realized it was all labeled in Russian. It took me some time to figure out what was what.

To the left, as usual, is the throttle and a number of switches related to landing gear, flaps, and trim. To the right is a bank of switches mainly devoted to lights, communications, and avionics.

Figuring out—and remembering—where the main instruments are was a bit of a challenging task. Most of the gadgets on the upper left are related to weapons controls, while a mach and angle of attack gauge are located on the upper right. On the far left, from top to bottom, are the airspeed indicator in km/h, a barometric altimeter, and a radar altimeter. To their right are an attitude indicator (top) and heading indicator (bottom). To their right is a combined turn coordinator/vertical speed indicator (top), true airspeed indicator, and a clock (bottom).

This version of the MiG-21 is a “bis” model, introduced in 1972, with more advanced avionics. So in addition to the main engine gauges (to the far right), it has a large radar scope at the center-right of the instrument panel.  Looking up, there’s a rearview mirror. There’s also a special console below it for managing nuclear weapons. We’re not fooling around here.

Like the F-104, the MiG-21 was one of the first fighter jets to feature an ejection seat. In early models, the hatch opened forward to shield the pilot from the oncoming rush of air. In later models, like this one, it opens to the side.

For an afternoon mission, I’m at the Russian airbase at Monchegorsk, about 100km south of Murmansk, where Soviet MiG-21s were based in the 1970s to intercept American bombers in the event of a nuclear war. I’ve set my flaps down 25 degrees. The takeoff speed of the MiG-21 is about 175 knots, or 320 km/h on my airspeed indicator, and I have less than 8,000 feet of runway to reach that. Even with full afterburners, I’ve found that it takes about 6,000 feet of runway for the MiG-21 to get off the ground fully loaded, which matches what I’ve been able to find from other sources on the internet.

The ice crystals in the air this winter afternoon are forming double rainbows over downtown Monchegorsk, established by Stalin in the 1930s as a work settlement for mining copper and nickel. During my mission, it has a population of 42,000, declining rapidly.

The emptying of the MiG’s internal fuel tanks alters its center of gravity and makes it unstable. This severely limits its range and time in the air to about 45 minutes. To overcome this, most MiG-21s flew with at least one external tank, like the one I’ve attached to the centerline. Other tanks can be attached to the wings, if needed—but at the expense of weapons.

In addition to normal afterburners, the MiG-21 could inject a second, “emergency” stream of fuel into its exhaust, giving it a performance boost for a maximum of three minutes. This boost gave it a thrust to weight ratio slightly better than 1:1, and a climb rate of 254 meters (833 feet) per second, matching the (much later) F-16. It had a service ceiling of 17,000 meters (almost 56,000 feet) which it could reach in 8 minutes 30 seconds. I’m barely at 11,000 feet here, but that’s because I want to be able to find my way home.

One issue with the nose intake and shock cone is that it leaves very little room for radar. Initially, this wasn’t seen as a problem because Soviet doctrine relied on ground radar stations to guide interceptors to their target. Looks like a false alarm: no American B-52s coming to obliterate the Motherland, at least not today. We better return back to Monchegorsk.

The MiG-21 lands fast, at 365 km/h, or almost 200 knots. To avoid sinking rapidly, it has to approach at closer to 450 km/h. I found landing the MiG-21 quite challenging, and I had to perform multiple go-arounds. With flaps and landing gear down, it’s very easy to get behind the power curve and fall short of the runway. One little problem is that the ejector seat only works safely above 110 meters (360 feet). When you do make the runway, it’s easy to clunk down very hard if you’re not careful. Fortunately, once you are on the ground, there’s a chute to deploy to slow you down quickly.

NATO forces gave the MiG-21 the code name “Fishbed”, a rather unappealing moniker for their premier fighter jet that the Soviets found insulting. Fishbed or not, the Russians saw a promising export market for the MiG-21. The very first customer, surprisingly, was Finland.

As neutrals in the Cold War, the Finns had a “treaty of friendship” with the Soviets that barred them from buying advanced combat aircraft from the West. One way the Finns got around this was by buying French-made Magisters as training jets that could be converted to attack aircraft in a pinch. However, in 1962, Nikita Khrushchev offered Finland the chance to buy a truly top-shelf fighter jet, which the Finns snapped up right away, eventually accumulating a fleet of 54 of them. About 20 years later, the Finns upgraded to the MiG-21bis, like the one I’m flying here. Finland’s air force actually continued flying MiG-21s until 1998, when they were replaced by the American F/A-18.

Only after Finland were the Soviets’ Warsaw Pact allies equipped with the MiG-21. This one, flying over the Elbe River, belongs to East Germany. Instead of air-to-air missiles, it is equipped (and camouflaged) for a ground attack role with a UB-32 rocket pod and a 500 kg (1,100 lbs) bomb under each wing. Had Soviet tanks ever rolled through the Fulda Gap in an all-out assault on NATO, MiG-21s like this one would have helped clear the way. That scenario never came to pass.

That does not mean the MiG-21 never went head-to-head with its U.S. adversaries. It did, in the skies over North Vietnam. Starting in 1966, the Soviet Union provided North Vietnam with MiG-21s to defend against the U.S. bombing campaign called Operation Rolling Thunder. I’m in one of them taking off from the Gia Lam airbase just north of Hanoi.

The North Vietnamese relied on the Soviet method of using ground-based radar stations to direct the MiG-21s towards incoming U.S. airplanes. In their first encounters, the Vietnamese pilots found themselves outmatched and were quickly shot down. But those who ejected and survived quickly learned to adapt.

Their primary foe was the F-4 Phantom, a more advanced “third-generation” multirole jet flown by the U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Marines. Equipped with sophisticated electronics, the F-4 relied primarily on radar to detect enemy airplanes and missiles to engage them at a distance, rather than engaging in close-in dogfights. Initially, the F-4s didn’t even have any guns, only missiles. The North Vietnamese soon found that they could utilize the MiG-21’s superior speed and agility to launch ambushes on the F-4s before they knew what hit them. Their tactic was dubbed “one pass, then haul ass.”

The MiG-21 had dogfighting weaknesses of its own. Its stubby delta wings gave it poor turning abilities in a sustained close-in fight. But its bursts of speed—along with its capable short-range Atoll heat-seeking missiles and 23mm cannon—gave it an unexpected edge against its more “advanced” opponent. Thirteen North Vietnamese pilots qualified as aces in the MiG-21, including Nguyễn Văn Cốc, who scored nine kills. All told, from 1966 to 1972, the North Vietnamese claimed 165 kills (including 103 F-4 Phantoms) at a cost of 65 Mig-21s (including 60 shot down by F-4s). The North Vietnamese MiG-21s even claim to have shot down at least one high-altitude B-52 bomber, though the U.S. attributes the loss to a SAM (surface-to-air missile).

The lethality of the MiG-21 gave rise to the legend, among American pilots, of the ominously named Colonel Tomb. Tomb (or Toon) allegedly had 13 kills before he was shot down by F-4 pilot and later Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham in May 1972. In fact, Colonel Tomb, like “the ghost of Kyiv,” was a myth. The legend may have been because the North Vietnamese pilots shared MiG-21s, and the kills painted on any one MiG (like the 13 red stars on this one) could be attributed to several different pilots.

In any case, the harsh lessons learned from fighting (and losing to) MiG-21s over North Vietnam led the U.S. Navy to establish its Fighter Weapons School, known as “TOPGUN,” in 1969 to re-learn the dogfighting tactics they had once dismissed as irrelevant in an age of missiles.

The combat success of the MiG-21 made it an enticing perk for countries willing to align more closely with the Soviet Union. Egypt, Syria, and Iraq all acquired fleets of MiG-21s for their air forces in the 1960s. Here I’ve taken off from Inshas Air Base, on the eastern edge of Egypt’s Nile River Delta, and am approaching the Suez Canal to match wits with the Israelis over the Sinai.

In 1967, Egypt’s entire fleet of MiG-21s were caught on the ground by the surprise Israeli attacks that started the Six Day War. Out of 110, 100 were destroyed before they could take off. In the war’s aftermath, Israel occupied the Sinai Peninsula for 15 years, until the Camp David Accords let to Israel’s withdrawal in 1982. The Suez Canal became the front line and was closed to all shipping for eight years, until 1975. During this period, Egyptian MiG-21s regularly skirmished with Israeli third-generation F-4 Phantoms and A-4 Skyhawks, in dogfights that often turned fatal.

By all accounts, the MiG-21s—once they got airborne—gave as good as they got, and Israeli losses steadily mounted. Some reports say that in 1970, the Soviet Union sent its own pilots and planes to take part in the action. Though their losses alarmed the Russians, they were able to pressure Israel into a ceasefire.

One of the major selling points of the MiG-21, for countries like Egypt, was its relative simplicity and low maintenance requirements. Ground crews said that turning one around was all but a matter of changing the oil and topping off the fuel, before it could take off again. Effective, long-lasting, and relatively cheap to operate, MiG-21s were sometimes dubbed the AK-47 of airplanes and proliferated accordingly. However, after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Israeli was able to upgrade its warplanes to fourth-generation F-15 Eagles and F-16 Falcons, with combined advanced electronics with more agile dogfighting ability. These newer airplanes completely outclassed the MiG-21 in the skies, and took some of the shine off the appeal of Soviet-supplied weaponry, at least against top-shelf U.S. allies.

In other theaters, though, the MiG-21 continued to excel. India bought its first MiG-21s in 1961, and soon entered in a technology agreement with the Soviets to manufacture their own. While they flew in the 1965 Indo-Pakistani War, India’s MiG-21s really proved their worth during the rematch with Pakistan in 1971, where they gave their supposed direct counterpart, the US-supplied F-104 Starfighters flown by Pakistan, a thrashing. The Indian MiGs claimed to have shot down at least four F-104s, along with two Chinese-built F-6s (a MiG-15 copy), one F-86 Sabre, and a C-130 Hercules. After the first few days, Indian MiG-21s controlled the skies and were able to focus their attention on ground attacks on targets in Pakistan. After the war, Pakistan dropped the F-104 from its fleet, and several countries like Iraq turned to India to train their MiG-21 pilots.

India ended up producing 840 of its home-built MiG-21s, and upgrading them to a version of the MiG-21bis which it dubbed the “Bison.” For years it served as the mainstay of the Indian air force. While the intention has long been to phase them out in favor of more modern aircraft, India still has three squadrons flying MiG-21s.

In 1999, the MiG-21 saw combat high in the Himalayas, when they were used to beat back ground incursions by Pakistan troops along the Line of Control (LOC) near Kargil. Operating in treacherous terrain, the Indian MiG-21s bombed and strafed Pakistani troops who had taken up position on Tiger Hill (in my sights straight ahead), at an elevation of 16,608 feet msl. One MiG-21 was shot down by a shoulder-fired missile, but the Pakistanis were eventually forced to withdraw after several days of tough fighting. More recently, in 2019, Indian MiG-21s even claimed to have shot down a Pakistani F-16 in a border skirmish—though the story is hotly disputed.

That said, India’s aging MiG-21s are not without their problems. Since 1971, more than 400 of them have gone down in accidents, killing 200 pilots and 50 people on the ground. The chronic problems are blamed on inadequate maintenance and poor quality replacement parts, as well as the airplane’s lack of modern safety features. Still, India continues to fly MiG-21s long after their expected retirement date because of difficulties acquiring more modern aircraft, and the fact that they still, despite everything, get the job done.

Another country that still flies the MiG-21, unsurprisingly, is Cuba, which reportedly retains a fleet of 12. Below me is downtown Havana.

The first MiG-21s were initially deployed to Cuba by the Soviets during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. A year later, rather than bringing them home, these aircraft were transferred to the Cubans. In the 1980s, the Cubans sent several MiG-21s, flown by Cuban pilots, to aid the Marxist government in Angola in its fight against US and South Africa-supported UNITA insurgents. Several of the Cuban-flown MiG-21s were shot down by shoulder-fired missiles, and at least one was downed in dogfights with French-built South African F1 Mirages.

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In all, over 60 countries have flown the MiG-21 at one time or another. Some 18 countries still have it in their inventory. Production continued from 1959 until it was halted in 1985, for 26 years. Until it was recently surpassed by the F-15 Eagle and F-16 Falcon, that was the longest production run of any combat aircraft in history. In addition to the 840 built by India, the Soviets built 10,645 and the Czechs 194. That’s a total of 11,496 airplanes, making the MiG-21 the most-produced combat aircraft since the Korean War, and the most-produced supersonic jet in history.

That’s not counting over 2,400 knock-off variants of the MiG-21 (called the Chengdu J-7) made by China and sold to at least a dozen other countries—and still flown by many of them. The Russians shared partial plans for the MiG-21 with China in 1962, but when relations cooled, the Chinese reverse engineered the airplane and started making it themselves. Production continued until 2013, and the J-7 (dubbed the “Fishcan”) is only now being phased out of active use in China’s air force.

In recent years, the MiG-21 has fought in smaller wars from the Congo to Ethiopia to Syria and Libya, providing both air superiority and ground support. In the 1990s, after the Berlin Wall fell, the MiG-21 came back into play in Europe. When Yugoslavia broke up into civil war, it brought all of its MiG-21s back to bases in Serbia. Those MiG-21s were used in an attack role against Croatian, Slovenia, and Bosnian troops on the ground, who lacked their own aircraft. Nevertheless, several were shot down by AA fire.

In 1992, the Croatians were able to acquire a handful of MiG-21s from pilots who defected (pictured above). Together with 40 MiG-21s there were able to purchase in violation of an international arms embargo, they served as the foundation for that country’s new air force. Croatia is now a NATO member (since 2009), but it still has a dozen MiG-21s. Plagued by accidents, they are scheduled to be replaced next year (2024) by Dassault Rafale F3R jets, purchased second-hand from France.

Romania is another NATO country which inherited a fleet of MiGs from the Cold War days. Originally numbering 110, they were significantly modernized in cooperation with Israel from 1993 to 2002. Despite these improvements, Romania’s MiG-21s have also been plagued by crashes. Only about two dozen are still operational, and they are scheduled to be retired later this year (2023), to be replaced by F-16s and eventually F-35s.

Some have proposed that Romania should hand over its retired MiG-21s to Ukraine, to aid in its fight against Putin’s ongoing invasion. Ukraine doesn’t have any MiG-21s in its air force anymore, but it has a lot of experience flying them, and even hosts a major maintenance depot for them, so it could integrate them quickly. If that does happen, it will add one more chapter—a rather ironic one—to the story of the Russian-made MiG-21, one of the most successful jet fighters in history.

If you’d like to see a version of this story with many more screenshots and historical images, you can check out my original post here. 

This story was told utilizing the MiG-21bis add-on to MSFS 2020 from Golden Key Studios, along with liveries produced by fellow users and shared on flghtsim.to for free.

The post The Effective, Long-Lasting MiG-21 appeared first on FLYING Magazine.