While this video can seem amusing it does seem to ignore that the mig 9 was basically a test bed for the jet technology used in the mig 15 and was never intended for use in combat by the Soviet military at any point.
I think it looked good on paper as mounting huge gun in a centre of fuselage would allow to use it without rocking and tearing the plane apart with recoil.
To be fair such gun mounting positions was really good for piston driven aircraft, so if you are unfamiliar with jets, like these engineers were, it would make sense.
@@matthiuskoenig3378 yeah, they failed to gauge how delicate the air intake was to debris and the stress the higher speed had on the materials used. It feels they reached a point where they were committed to the design and either pride or government pressure kept them from a full redesign.
Even the A-10, which was designed twenty-odd years after the MiG-9, struggled with choking the engines and covering the canopy in soot. They solved the choking by wiring the ignition to the trigger, so if the engines do flame out, they’ll start right up immediately after fresh air flows into the engine.
20:00 "For example, when in January 1948 one of the MiG s factory engineers, Alexander Abramzon, visited the 3rd Guards Aviation Regiment, he found to his surprise that among all the MiG-9s received by the unit 2 months prior, only one aircraft had flown, and that only once. Meanwhile the rest of the fighters were sitting untouched in the open field under rain and snow, so their engines had even started to rust. The reason for this, as he later learned, was that the regiment had only 30% of the required technician staff and even those available were sitting in barracks doing nothing due to the lack of boots." This isn't incompetence, this is _advanced_ incompetence.
Yeah, it's sadly how Russia works. They sincerely only ever seem to make genuine, sometimes even edge leading, progress during an active war. Other wise, they always think they know what's best, they get into a war, get utterly curbstomped and then pick up on NATO or enemy tactics and use those. Their equipment, kit, leadership, structure, it all sees this type of fart smelling behavior. They just can't accept, at least not openly, that they need help with designs, modern tech, etc. They just plug their ears screaming "LA LA LA LA" until they have no choice but to adapt or be shot/go to gulag.
The US would never build a plane that is so ineffective that it cant fly in rain or near thunderstorms. Or build a flying abortion that has killed more US troops than enemy engagements like the osprey 😅
And yet this WASN'T the Sovietiest Soviet aircraft that ever Sovieted. That was the Tu-22 Backfire. That bird had all of the cons of the B-58 Hustler and none of the pros.
While some may get off on a fact, that this jet couldn't really shoot its main thing, I find it super weird, that this jet didn't have fuel indicator. With jet engines, the fuel indicator is one of the most important instruments in the cockpit, as these engines burn through fuel like crazy
I might be completely wrong about this, but i think i remember a presentation about restoring and flying a mig 21 and i swear they mentioned something about the mig 21 (and earlier designs) not having fuel indicators either. I think it was partially because of the relative complexity of actually making and adding the sensors, but more because of how little fuel some of the smaller jets could carry and how short the flight time was on a full tank (i think under 30 minutes) it was far cheaper and almost as effective to rely on a timer to figure out how much burn time you had left instead of a fuel gauge.
@@restitvtororbis5330 MiG-21, obviously, did have an in-cockpit fuel gauge, it just was designed differently from a typical fuel gauge in a WWII fighter or a pre-2000s car. The latter would be usually connected to a float that raises and lowers with the level of liquid in the fuel tank(s); whereas in a MiG1 -21, the ground crew had to accurately input the amount of fuel filled in. Then, when the engine is running, flow meters in the fuel lines are used to measure fuel consumption. The fuel gauge here is essentialy an electro-mechanical downcounter which deducts the amount of fuel consumed from the initial set up value and gives you an estimation of fuel remaining.
I discovered this channel a few weeks ago, already one of my favorites, I watched most of the older videos as well and I'm aware of "...the soviet union wouldn't be the soviet union..." quote/joke, I love it!
I enjoyed seeing it once but I always enjoy seeing your videos again. I also love the fact you the Mig-9 got the glory of the first jet fighter in flight for the USSR because of connections. Helps who you know right?
Well, the Sputnik and then the second rocket with the satellite containing Laika, the dog, were only launched because Nikita Chrustschow was a massive fanboy of the head of the russian space and carrier rocket program, Sergej Koroljow. When the first russian H-bomb meant to be carried in a rocket was ready to be integrated into the rest of the weapon system, the russian carrier rocket developed for this bomb failed time and again. One time it exploded, another time it failed to separate the freight from the engines. In the end, the developers of the H-bomb simply declared that they would not trust this rocket system and that they would not hand over the bomb. In the end, the design of the carrier rocket got a complete overhaul and redesign, but Koroljow now had two spare rockets, so... In the end, he palavered Chrustschow into allowing something that was little more than a pet project for Koroljow. Fun fact, Koroljow started his career as rocket engineer in a russian gulag at the polar circle. His work with self-made rockets made him suspicious as a supposed saboteur.
@@Furzkampfbomber And because Soviet nukes were so heavy that they required a heavy-lifting rocket, which later turned out to be easy to convert to carry other payloads incl. an astronaut.
@@oleksiysokolov3510 Oh, I was not aware of that, but it makes a lot of sense. It's quite stunning and sad how often war is indeed the 'father of all things'.
Early American nukes were similarly heavy, the rocket that put John Glenn in orbit was an Atlas missile, and the later Gemini program used the Titan II missile as its booster. Funny how all these early ICBMs made better orbital rockets than weapons.
"Wait, won't that just ingest all the muzzle gases from the cannon and flame out its own engines if it fires? ... Yes, yes it will. All righty then! This is fine."
12:53 The gun propellant gas ungestion problem is why the MiG-15 and the fighters that succeeded it all had their guns mounted below and behind the intake.
For that same reason, I've always wondered how the german Gotha 229 Flying Wing could have fired her MK-108 cannons without flaming out her engines at the first round...
@@geoff-lukebihler6157 The Horton 229 was NEVER actually fitted with any guns. If fitted, they would've been without muzzle devices, like on the Me 262.
@@geoff-lukebihler6157 German 30mm aircraft cannons didn't use muzzle breaks. Look at the Me 262. It used the same cannons, and they don't protrude from the fuselage.
Well done video. The aerodynamic issues with the Mig9 were matched with powerplant issues. They used a copy of the BMW003 built in a Bmw factory moved to Russia, but they did'nt have the technical documentation . Their inexperience with jet technology and metallurgy was a stumbling block for quite some time. They did get a leg up when Rolls-Royce sold them Nene engines that helped make the Mig-15 a success. So many planes have been at the mercy of good/bad powerplants.
If there only were a way to go back in time and supply the Mig 9, P-59 and other first gen jets with third gen engines. We may find the engineering was equal to the thrust. I wonder if it would have taken more time to get swept wings in operations. The F-80 was hampered greatly by the early engines, but went on to have a long career in it’s two-seat T-33 variant. The F-84, like the F-80, required tremendously long takeoff rolls.
Even very modern fighters have been shafted this way, particularly home grown non-NATO designs. Not that they are bad, they just can't deliver the same power to weight or power to volume.
@@RS_Mogli yup - started off with a 57mm and downgraded to a 37mm. The Mossie had a 6lber (57mm) strapped to it at one point and I'm sure the US stuck some artillery calibre onto a few of their WW2 planes, so it's not that unusual.
@@ronhall9039 Some B-25 Mitchell variants were fitted with a 75mm cannon. The Germans slapped a 75mm gun on the Hs-129. The Italians beat them all with a 102mm howitzer mounted to a naval bomber.
Wow, the amount of its fine in the Soviet Air Force and the military is crazy. They didn't care they were adding more ways of friendly fire killing their men than before the enemy could.
A Soviet interceptor of that time was probably intended to engage the American B-36, a prewar design able to cruise at 13,000m, about three kilometers higher than the Japanese Zero. The MiG-9 was able to match the B-36's ceiling, so closely it was almost certainly designed with that in mind.
Without having watched the video yet, I do remember this issue very well from Il-2 '46, especially with the I-300 prototype sporting the massive 57mm cannon. I was one of the three virtual pilots on the entire planet who managed to be successful with that thing without constantly losing the engines simply because I fricken knew to throttle back before firing that thing. Much more modern planes had similar issues BTW. Just recently got the Mirage F1 for DCS and learnt that it has a throttle back automatic going when firing the DEFAs for the same reason. And the F-14A does the same by the way. Fun fact: The RD-20 basically is a BMW 003.
@@PaperSkiesAviation Yes, I mean they even took the production facilities to produce those engines themselves. I wonder how far their own reseach was during that time. At least they had a rocket powered interceptor before Germany did, and its fuels was way less dangerous during the refueling process... you could make an episode about it, it's the Bereznyak-Isayev BI-x series, sometimes also called Bolkhovitinov after the design bureau's head. Would perfectly fit into your channel covering the less well-known things :)
Ever since this and your previous video on Soviet TopGun program you've quickly become one of my favorite aviation RU-vidrs. The footage you use, your narration, and subtle music is truly a pleasure to watch, keep it up man!
I personally do really like the looks of the MiG-9. By the way, that the MiG-9 only beat the Tu-2 during the performance trials makes me wonder which aspects they all graded and if they overvalued manoeuvrability instead of speed.
Probably just constant turn rate. It would bleed off more speed when turning than the 262 due to the wing design. And it literally had the same engines. We all have heard the stories of the 262 being most vulnerable right after takeoff with basically no speed. Same applies here. Took ages to get it up to speed.
@@CakePrincessCelestia yes, I think this was a fairly common problem, although to varying degrees in different countries, with all of the early turbojets, with many different solutions attempted to try get the short take-off / early flight regime already achieved by the most mature prop fighters (F-84 for being the most extreme example)
I believe that they were mock dogfights. Otherwise, the Soviets had detailed performance data for all of their prop aircraft, so there was no need to do anything except run solo performance trials for the MiG-9.
I like the Yak-15 being towed by a Lend-Least Jeep.! As for your accent, I understand everything you say. Your English is very good. I wish my Russian and Ukrainian were half as good. I am teaching myself both languages. The fuel system on the MiG-9 is very very strange, how many airplanes were wrecked due to running out of fuel? But I have to say they did get it right with the MiG-15
@@_b_x_b_1063 I know. My mom spoke polish, she and my grandmother did not pass that language on to me. I am 67 now and retired but had a job and in the hangar across from where I worked as a Pilot was a MiG-15 and I really wanted to fly that airplane. Mom could understand a lot of Russian, they are very similar.
Ironically the MiG-15, while no longer having the fueling issue, allegedly had its own fuel tank issue, where the high pressure pumps could cause the tank to implode, if there was venting issues. Unfortunately there's very little information about this in any english source I could find, but given the myriad of issues the MiG-21 had with its fuel tanks, I think its plausible.
The reason the MiG-15 was such a success was thanks largely to the Rolls Royce Nene, which Britain unwisely "sold" the Soviet Union (sold being in quotes because the Soviet Union never actually paid Britain for it), on the caveat that it was not to be used for military purposes, which, of course, the Soviet Union promptly violated that term of the agreement as well.
As far as we know, nobody would have known those are lend lease sometimes. There were rumors about sercret factories making those and people believed them, despite truck having writings and logos of us manufacturing (later deleted). at least my parents tell me this (we were occupied by soviets. Thanks by the way for doing lend lease to them, not to the people really needing it)
Nice video, the mig 9 is like one of the forgotten soviet fighters, everyone remember the mig 19, 21 , 23,25,27 and 29 and the su 27+ but no one remembers the early migs or the sukhoi fitter series
"When thinking about Soviet MiGs most of you would normally imagine some slick-looking swept wing fighter aircraft. Indeed, today it’s hard to imagine anything else for the MiG - an aircraft that for decades became the synonym for a any Soviet fighter. However, such a perception could hardly apply to the first jet MiG. Unlike its famous successors, like the MiG-15, 21 or 29, the very first mass-produced jet fighter by Mikoyan and Gurevich, the MiG-9, did not possess any elegant exterior or outstanding flight characteristics. ...". This is the opening part from the very 1st version of my script :). However, as with some other parts, I cut it off while "optimizing" the length of the video.
I believe that Sukhoi’s early jet fighters were shoved into the background and effectively ignored because Lavochkin, I believe it was, convinced Stalin that Sukhoi’s fighters were nothing more than copies of the German Me-262 and thus shouldn’t be fielded by the Soviet Air Force.
@@gertjanmoens4188 It was one of the game replays that shipped with IL-2... We (few other guys and I) collaborated on forums to standardize performance testing using Fraps. Decided on Black Death replay - and to run Fraps with FPS logging from 0:05 to 1:05 length. Results would then be posted (together with CPU/RAM specs and NVIDIA settings)...
@@str8ballinSA Black Death literally was the benchmark "level" back in the day. Counted way more than any 3DMark or other thing. But I never used FRAPS with it... instead I opened up the console and entered >fps start show :)
You are so modest with that "having trouble understanding my Ukrainian accent". DUDE! your English is better than most Americans and way less obnoxious than most Britts! Love your videos.
It is quite possible. Putting all the blame on the pilot who couldn't say anything (because he's dead now), is an easy way to cover design mistakes and failures.
2 Paper Skies videos within 2 weeks! Is it Christmas already?! I'd watch your videos 24/7 if there was enough to do so! In the meantime then, well, I revisit them on a regular basis! Salutations du Québec!
"The regiment had only 33% of the required technical staff, and those 33% couldn't do anything, because of a lack of shoes." The bad thing is, there's really nothing uncommon about that sentence, because this was the soviet union. The worst part is, little has changed in Russia since then, apparently.
There’s something magical about those early jet aircraft, a lot of the designers were trying wild stuff, some innovative, some a bit to crazy for its own good. The ho229 and the meteor are some of my favourites.
In a lot of ways it's impressive that the MiG-9 and Yak-15 performed as well as they did when you consider the circumstances of their development. The US, UK, Italy, and Germany had world class aviation engineers working on the problem of jet propulsion for military aircraft for five years or more before they produced operable fighters, and the US and UK did so without the endemic corruption and questionable leadership that the Soviets had constantly screwing things up. That the MiG-9 could fly at all barely a year after it was first ordered is borderline miraculous.
Really amazing how a lot of the issues that plagued the Mig-9 are a microcosm of the Soviet/Russian military as a whole, and even more said problems still persist to this day in the exact same manner as evidenced by the ongoing conflict: a military more concerned about flashy looks and appearances to show off at parades, which only looks mighty and intimidating on the outside, but in reality heavily flawed and unable to perform to its fullest due to economic issues, incompetence, arrogance, and the inability of the brass to accept any wrongdoing.
a much later fighter, the Hawker Hunter prototype had the same problem. "Britain's latest fighter, the Hawker Hunter, is a great success .. except for its inability to fire its guns."
Seems to me that "This is Fine" is the eternal motto of Russia from the very beginning. Under the Communists, it became a Mantra. It's very interesting looking at the careful design of the A-10, that addresses this problem by carefully controlling the airflow so all the crud stays under the aircraft, not going up into the top-mounted turbofans. As far as they could get it from that cannon.
The thing that blew my mind the most about post war soviet jet fighters isn't even the fact that our only good engine was british engine literary gifted to us by UK, which became the heart of MiG-15. No, instead it was our inability to copy airportable radars for nightfighters until MiG-17P. Great. Cool.
Never knew you are Ukrainain, but now i like your videos even more. Regardless, they were top notch content anyway. Kudos, keep up the good job & greetings from your Romanian neighbours.
Fantastic telling of this fascinating story. Everyone knows of the MiG-15 and 17 here in the States, but few have ever heard of the MiG-9, and you told it's story well. Thank you!
5:10 Ironic. The US Mercury program had the same problem. The Mercury-Redstone and the crew were ready to fly way ahead of the Soviet's first manned flight, but the engineers got cold feet and insisted on one more unmanned test flight.
it actuly took a while for jets to outperform props. they had lower thrust but they could carry that thrust to high speed and altitudes. but the time to climb record was healed by the f8f bearcat a naval prop for 10 years during the time of these early jets.
A story I heard... The same engine stalling problem happened again when VVS entered the missile age. This time they put a small tank of gasoline and a bottle of oxygen in the plane, then link the ignition switch to the trigger. When guns or missiles were fired, the engine would try to re-ignite constantly. So the engine flames out all the time, but it always re-ignites!
It probably helped that Artem Mikoyan (the "Mi" part of "MiG") had close ties to senior Soviet leadership, namely his brother Anastas, who was one of only a handful of old Bolshies that survived the purges, both Stalin's bloody ones and the much milder ones when Khrushchev and Brezhnev came to power.
'This is fine', said the Soviet Government. Many years ago, during the bad old days of the cold war, I had family members overseas who were devout communists (living in the west, mind you) and they always told me that Soviet/Communist technology never broke down, never failed and never...well, you get the idea. It's like The Critical Drinker's refrain, "Nah, It'll be fine".
Well, it is mostly the case really. Whatever piece of soviet tech I find, if not torn apart, it somehow manages to work to this day. I have a soviet fridge in my garage, made in 1950s, the damn thing cools my beer to this day.
Nice job as always. It's funny how your accent actually makes it easier for me to understand what's said, as my mother tongue is russian and as I speak Ukranian.
Great channel. Nice of the Soviet Union to provide you with this much tailor made video material for the video. As a small video creator I can appreciate how useful that is 🙂 And great that you give the money to Ukraine 👍
I find the Soviet propensity to lie about everything, even things that don't need to be lied about, very telling and almost humorous. It's amazing a country and government can function like that.
Great doc, and a historical eye-opener to the (then) Soviet political treatment of aviation and engineering developments. I'd just like to have seen a comment about the reverse engineering of the Rolls Royce Derwent and Nene engines that helped the Soviets make the jump to the Mig 15.
I didn't (it often would not play ads anyway in my FF even if I disabled it), but decided to let it run in the background in Microsofts browser downloader (Edge) that doesn't have a blocker installed, turned it down to 144p and also 2x speed (according to Linus Sebastian, this counts fully as if you watched at 1x in regards of revenue) for saving traffic and energy :)
Decreased drag but drastically reduced lateral stability. I've heard from several ex-flyers that at low and peak speeds it was like trying to steer a kite in a wind storm.
Great production thanks! Don’t see enough quality stuff on early non-US/UK fighters. FWIW to be fair, a lot of countries were still figuring things out with cannon armed early jets - mig 9 certainly wasn’t alone with engine problems from gun blast ingestion ( hawker hunter & Australian Sabre being obvious ones that spring to mind).
The problem of gases during firing entering the intake isn't unique, in the 1960s when the US installed a gun on its F4 Phantom jet during firing the gases could in some circumstances be ingested into the intakes causing flame outs, the muzzle fairing under the radome had to be redesigned to rectify the issue.
Silly question but if they really wanted to mount the big 37mm anti everything cannon, why out of all the possible places did they put it directly in front of the engine intakes? Exactly how heavily armoured were US bombers of the time anyway?
Probably because they wanted to have the gun in line with the center of mass and in the direction of the nose. If the gun isn't in line with the center of mass every time you fire that gun your nose gets thrown off target. Not much of an issue with guns of a smaller calibre, but it can become a serious issue with larger guns. This is also what the A-10 makes use off in its design. Now issues arise when someone has never designed a jet aircraft and don't fully appreciate the jet engine air intakes.
Paper Skies, it's been approximately 3 months with no news. Are you ok? Knowing that you are Ukrainian (unsure if you live there), I think a lot of your subscribers are worried about you (me included).
I have a question about the movie footage used in this video. It looks to be a soviet era film about the Mig-9 and the problems you discussed. Is this correct? Also, I was wondering how they described these difficulties. I would think that it was still described as miraculous technological achievement of the glorious USSR. True? Cheers
So you're telling me... these guys decided to essentially stick a massive rod of fumes inside the planes lungs was a good idea. That's like putting a cigar in your throat, you're gonna suffocate no matter what.
The footage looks amazing - was there a Soviet documentary or movie dramatization made about the MiG-9? Or was some of this from actual Mikoyan-Gurevich archives?
I’m somewhat surprised that Mikoyan thought putting the gun in front of the intake wouldn’t cause issues. Lots of gasses come out of a gun barrel when it’s fired but oxygen generally isn’t among them.
An excellent mini-documentary on the tragic MiG-9. Is the film footage you used for this available to see in it's original form? I'd be quite interested in watching that original film.
I always liked the MIG 9 . Many years ago , would you believe before we had plastic kits . We used to make our own models out of balsa wood. I must have made over a hundred , all to a scale of 1/100 . Which was the common scale then, not 1/72 as used today.
As a pilot for over 45 years, these early Soviet jets were probably the scariest planes for a pilot to fly. Considering these poor bastards were ordered to fly these junkers under threat of a trip to the gulag, my hats off to their bravery and guts for doing it. Imagine aeronautical engineer's being sent to the gulag for not meeting production quota's when the Rooskies couln't even supply them with the parts they needed. Rather Dead than RED! God Bless the U.S.A!
i always like it when you post video's, not too often but that is okay! i love aviation history as i am to become an avionics tech. I'd love to see if you could make like a video of the design process and development of the helicopter! if in the future that could be arranged, that would be amazing (:
Your content is always fantastic dude, one of the best aviation channels on youtube, but what you are doing for Ukraine is the kind of altruistic goodness there is just not enough of, and sets a profound example of how social participation is suppose to work, so thank you very much.
I never understood why the early Soviet jets had mixed caliber cannons. The different calibers had different ballistics, rates of fire, logistics like ammo and parts. From a nation that mass produced tens of thousands of aircraft and tanks during WW2, you would think they would have used a single standard caliber from the start, maybe even copied a successful weapon from another country like the German MK 108. Of course, all the mixed caliber shenanigans eventually resulted in the NR-30 cannon in 1954, but it just feels like it should have been that way from the beginning.
