The Soviet MiG fighters that ended up in the United States Air Force Museum

@ElentirENG ES 8·29·2023 · 23:44 0

Opened in 1923, the National Museum of the United States Air Force (USAF) is the oldest aviation museum in the world.

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This museum is located at the Wright-Patterson AFB air base in Dayton (Ohio), and has one of the largest collections of aircraft in the world, with a total of 360. Among the aircraft on display are some from before the First World War, as well as airplanes from both World Wars, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the Cold War. Interestingly, the museum has in its collections a total of nine Soviet MiG fighters, manufactured by the famous Mikoyan-Gurevich aeronautical design bureau, founded in 1939 and still in existence.

Of those nine MiGs, six are on display in the museum: a MiG-15bis, a MiG-17F, a MiG-19S, a MiG-21PF, a MiG-23MS and a MiG-29A. In addition, there are three other MiGs in the museum's warehouses: a MiG-21, a MiG-23MLD and a MiG-25RB. You can see below some photos of these fighters, published by the National Museum of the USAF in its site website. In quotation marks I indicate the nicknames assigned by NATO to each of these Soviet fighters.

A North Korean Air Force MiG-15bis "Fagot". It was obtained from a pilot who defected to South Korea.

The interior of the cockpit of the North Korean MiG-15bis. The plane looked anything but comfortable.

A MiG-17F "Fresco". This fighter was donated by Egypt to this American museum in 1986, and was painted as a North Vietnamese Air Force fighter.

A MiG-19S "Farmer". It was one of the Soviet fighters obtained by the United States and evaluated by the USAF 457th Technical Evaluation Squadron, secretly, at Nellis AFB, Nevada , as part of the Constant Peg Project. The aircraft was delivered by that USAF squadron to the museum in October 1994.

A MiG-21PF "Fishbed-D". The museum's website does not indicate the origin of this aircraft, but the fighter was built in the former Czechoslovakia, according to a report published by the Spanish magazine "Defensa" in December 2006. It is painted as a fighter of the 921st Fighter Regiment of the North Vietnamese Air Force.

A MiG-23MS "Flogger-E". The museum's website does not indicate its provenance, but it is possibly one of the MiG-23MS delivered by Egypt to the US and which were secretly evaluated by the 4477th Test Squadron at Nellis AFB as part of Project Constant Peg. The aircraft was declassified by the USAF and delivered to the museum in February 2017. It is currently decorated as a Soviet Air Force fighter.

The cockpit of the MiG-23MS , with a distinctive light blue paint that was a feature of Soviet fighter interiors for many years.

A MiG-29A "Fulcrum". The museum's website does not indicate it, but it was one of the 21 MiG-29A fighters purchased by the US from Moldova, specifically the White 25 (cn 2960516761). Previously, this fighter flew with the 234th Guards Aviation Fighter Regiment of the Soviet Air Force. It is decorated like a Soviet fighter.

The cockpit of the MiG-29A. As you can see, missing devices. They were surely extracted by US military intelligence and it was not considered opportune to expose them.

You can see here a short video published today by the National Museum of the USAF showing these fighters:

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Photos: National Museum of the United States Air Force.