Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15
The Fagot
“The jet that shocked the West over Korea.”
Mikoyan-Gurevich · military
When the MiG-15 appeared over the Yalu in November 1950 it could outclimb and outrun every Allied jet in theatre, and it took the F-86 Sabre to even the fight. Its secret was a swept wing and a Rolls-Royce Nene engine the Soviets had bought legally from Britain and copied. More MiG-15s were built than any other jet fighter in history. The two-seat UTI trainer is what survives, flown by collectors and used for decades to train pilots across the Soviet bloc.
The British government sold the Soviet Union 25 Rolls-Royce Nene engines in 1947; the reverse-engineered copy, the Klimov VK-1, powered every MiG-15 that fought in Korea.
Round nose intake, a mid-set swept wing with fences on top, and a high tailplane halfway up a swept fin. Barrel-shaped and short; the MiG-17 is longer with a more sharply swept wing.
One might be overhead right now.
Bogey turns the The Fagot from a dot in the sky into a card in your logbook.
