Mig-28

The Mikoyan Mig-28 ( Nato reporting name Fang ) is an actual aircraft that won fame as a fiction in the 1986 movie Top Gun. It was developed from the Mig-18 that has the same codename.

Mig-18
The origins of the Fang are shrouded in mystery. What is known for sure that at the time the Atlee Government of UK was supplying the Soviet Union with jet engine technology, the British Air Attache was shown a test tunnel model of the type .As far as it is known captured German engineers working in the Soviet Union had no knowledge of the aircraft , although the engines were highly modified BMW units. Russian historians in recent times have come up with the explanation that it was the work of designers still under arrest, in this context the Sharaska of Tupolev comes to mind. It is widely agreed that Russians destroyed any documents relating to its early period. Whatever the origin might be the aircraft had an immediate impact in convincing British experts to deny the advantages of the swept wing. In later years after the few clashes in Korea, the Lockheed Corporation was highly influenced by the straight / thin wing while it was designing the F-104 .And in the supreme compliment the type was copied in the West as the Northrop F-5 Freedom Fighter / Tiger series.

Nothing is known about the flight tests but it is assumed that they took place in 1949. Joseph Stalin gave priority to Mikoyan Gurevich's MiG-15 ( Fagot ) but to confuse Western Intelligence Agencies two examples were ordered to give the impression that the type would be supplementing the MiG-15 as a Short Take Off interceptor in remote areas where the bases would be lacking in runway lenght. To support this illusion everybody involved in the programme was ordered to mention the aircraft as the "Siberian". Russian sources are adamant that the type performed beyond expectations in the tests, diving supersonically in the maiden flight. As the MiG-17 was yet to fly and the first Fresco would crash in an attempt to go past Mach 1 in March 1950, Stalin rebranded the aircraft as a Mig , and the number 18 was specifically given to remind the generals of the newly established PVO - Strany that the plane was unwanted despite their fervent pleas. It was the Russian way to number fighters in odd numbers and this "abomination " would not fight. To further the point the aircraft was armed with only two UBS 12.7 mm machine guns in contrast with the cannons on the "real" MiGs. Although there was ample space in the nose to put 20 mm ShVAK cannons.

In 1951in a surprising turn of events the two prototypes were ordered to the Russian Naval Base Area ( Port Arthur ; now Darien, China ). In their first flight they went in at low level to surprise F-80s attacking rail lines near Sinuiju. The combat was inconclusive like 3 or 4 more clashes with the F-86s later on .The early Fang lacked afterburners and the wing loading was too high. The only superiority to Allied fighters was that no plane in theatre could catch it in a dive.

Mig-28
The programme remained in limbo for years .Stalin didn't like it and Kruschev preferred missiles. Yet when Pavel Sukhoi reopened his OKB one of the conditions that he had that the type would be kept current. As the MiG-19 had the momentum at the time Sukhoi had to work with a single large jet engine which drove up the fuselage size, in time diverging from the initial model and easing the work of those opposed it. What saved it from total cancellation was that a captured Sidewinder missile was evaluated by the Russians in 1958. To maintain a successful ruse 10 to 14 more airframes were ordered to be equipped with Sidewinders in November 1960. Russians did not believe Sidewinder delivered was an actual weapon as it was so simple ; ordering Sidewinders on a specialised airframe would convince the Western goverments that the Russia was totally backwards and lull them to ease on military expenditure. Meanwhile KGB operatives were enjoying themselves greatly with reports of how the Americans were copying a failure as the T-38 and the private venture N-156. The same KGB directorate then stole an AIM-9B from a Dutch airbase in 1961 and understood the Sidewinder was real. To clear themselves they immediately began to clamour for more Siberians .The Mikoyan Guryevich OKB had to use MiG-19 engines in the larger Sukhoi fuselage. The plane had changed sufficiently to deserve a new number, though NATO would insist it on calling the Fang as it looked still the part at the initial merge. (People familiar with the NATO codes will recognise there is one more oddity about this decision as it is part of the protocoles to give single syllable names to propeller types and the Mig-18 was believed to be turboprop powered for a while by the Americans .)

In 1962 the American copy was chosen as the MAP plane ; due to intelligence reports that Russians were now in a frenzy to get more Siberians, despite Kruschev's cashiering of thousands of fighter aircraft and their pilots in favour of SAMs. A newspaper report from the period described the choice of the Freedom Fighter as a plan to "get a dog killed by another dog ". As it was now clear that there would be a showdown in Vietnam and the Saigon regime would be supplied by F-5s in all probability, 5 single seaters and a twin were sent -it is said even before the factory could paint them - to act as dissimilar air combat training aircraft to North Vietnam in 1963, starting a world wide fad of using the type as an Agressor aircraft. After the start of hostilities those aircraft were involved in the fight that is depicted in the movie Top Gun.

Faults in the movie Top Gun
The combat took place in November 5 ,1965 ; starting 10 miles inside the coast over Hainan, China not Indian Ocean of 1980s .The USN aircraft were Phantoms , looking for a rematch of Murphy incident , not F-14s .The fight never endangered a USN carrier or any ship and the claim of Exocet capability ( at that time ) is of course laughable. All 4 shootdowns of Migs were due to Sparrows fired from long distance and the single Phantom was downed by a Sidewinder, causing the Americans to retreat. The scenes of gunfire damage on American aircraft are actually inspired by the 1975 clash of Fangs with F-14s over Chan Thanh, where the damaged VF-1 Tomcat had 19 bullet holes to its right fin and stabilizer. All those schoolchildren harassed by their friends in 1980s can find solace in the fact that when the fight became visual, Mig-28 showed that it had no peers in the world of 1965 and it was still a contender in the one of 1975.

Current Status
It is believed there is still a sizeable population of Siberian Tigers "still itching to fight" with MiG-29 engines installed, although the single picture so far released purporting to show one is clearly an American F-20. The game of bluff that has always characterised the Fang series continues.