MiG Aircraft Since 1937

Ref: 4549

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{detailed description}When Artyom Ivanovich Mikoyan was appointed head of the Soviet Union's new experimental aircraft design department (OKO) in 1939, he accepted the post on the condition that another young designer, Mikhail Iosifovich Guryevich, could be his deputy. This was the start of a partnership that would last for almost thirty-five years. During this time, the name MiG would become famous the world over. In 1940, the pair's first fighter aircraft went into production. Designated the MiG-1, after the two designers, it was probably the first fighter to exceed 400mph in level flight. By the time Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, more than one-third of the country's fighters were MiGs. Soon after the Second World War, Britain foolishly sent to Moscow the world's most powerful turbojet, enabling the MiG company to develop the first Soviet swept-wing jet fighter, the MiG-15, then the most advanced in Europe. Once on top, the MiG team's talent and speed of reaction kept it there, and the company went on to produce some of the most feared high-performance military aircraft of the twentieth century. With the advent of perestroika in 1991, the MiG design bureau turned to civil aircraft in an attempt to find fresh markets and to keep its loyal workforce in employment. It is currently developing a number of prototypes, including the MiG-110 transport.
MiG Aircraft since 1937 reunites Bill Gunston, OBE, FRAeS, and Moscow-based Yefim Gordon, who previously worked together on Yakovlev Aircraft since 1924, also in the Putnam series. With their contacts in Russia, the authors have been allowed unprecedented access to the archives of both the former Soviet Union's design bureaux and the MiG company itself. As a result, they present here the first definitive and fully accurate work of reference on all the MiG designs, complete with hundreds of photographs and drawings - several of which have never been published before - as well as previously unrecorded details of MiG variants.
Cover illustration: An original painting by Wilfred Hardy G.AVA. depicting two MiG-29As of a Soviet Air Force Frontal Aviation fighter regiment.
{Author / Publisher / Date}by Bill Gunston and Yefim Gordon
1998 1st edn. (large format) 288pp
{condition}mint, in loose poly covered d/j.
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