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00:00...to the development of modern flight, wings over the world.
00:03Then go into battle with Wings at War, next on Discovery Wings.
00:23In the 1980s, the Soviet Union introduces the MiG-29 fulcrum to the West.
00:29It is an awesome machine. Powerful, fast and agile.
00:35Today, the MiG-29 remains among the top fighters in the world.
00:40But it belongs to the last generation of Soviet aircraft design.
00:45Artyom Mikoyan was the first head of the MiG design bureau, which was set up in the Soviet Union in December 1939.
01:01His second in command was Mikhail Gurievich.
01:05The name MiG comes from a combination of the initial letters of their two names.
01:11In World War II, they produced the MiG-1 and the MiG-3 piston engine fighters.
01:16But it wasn't until the post-war years, when they began to develop jet aircraft, the MiG-9 and the MiG-15, that their design bureau began to become a legend.
01:26In the 1950s and 60s, their aircraft dominated the Soviet fighter inventory and caused Western defense authorities many sleepless nights.
01:37By 1969, Mikhail Gurievich had retired and ill-health forced Artyom Mikoyan to leave his beloved bureau forever.
01:49His last project was the MiG-23, the workhorse Soviet fighter of the 70s.
01:54Rostislav Belyakov took over as head of the bureau, which was now renamed Mikoyan.
02:02Belyakov had been working with MiG since 1941.
02:06He was a graduate of the Moscow Aviation Institute.
02:10One of his first jobs with MiG was helping to modernize the armament system of the MiG-1 and MiG-3 fighters.
02:17After the war, he became manager in charge of developing the landing gear for the MiG jets.
02:28It could be a challenging job.
02:30The Soviet Air Force always placed great emphasis on the need for robust landing gear that could survive the most primitive airfields.
02:38In 1962, Belyakov became Artyom Mikoyan's deputy.
02:47He was also Mikoyan's personal choice as his successor.
02:51Belyakov became head of the design bureau after Artyom Mikoyan's death in 1970.
02:57By the mid-70s, a new generation of American fighters, strongly influenced by the revolutionary MiG fighters of the 60s, was causing concern in the Soviet Union.
03:10This new generation rejected the idea that a combination of beyond-visual range radar and air-to-air missiles was the ultimate approach to fighter aircraft.
03:20There was a swing back to the classic fighter, a fast and highly maneuverable machine capable of duelling one-on-one with an equally agile opponent.
03:36The US Navy's Grumman F-14 Tomcat was designed for fleet defense.
03:41It was by far the largest of the new fighters.
03:46Like the MiG-23, it had variable geometry wings to give it good high and low speed performance.
03:52It was not as light and maneuverable as the American fighters that would follow.
03:57But it was a step in what Soviet authorities saw to be a new direction.
04:01The McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle, on the other hand, was an incredibly flexible aircraft.
04:14It could fly at two and a half times the speed of sound.
04:18It was extremely maneuverable and could operate equally well as a classic air superiority dogfighter or as a straightforward ground attack aircraft.
04:27Some authorities consider it to be too versatile, a complex and expensive overreaction to the false notion that the Soviet MiG-25 was a dogfighter as well as an ultra high speed interceptor.
04:42The General Dynamics F-16, though, was a pure dogfighter in the traditional sense.
04:56It was light, highly maneuverable and much less complex and expensive than the F-15 to produce.
05:03It could also be adapted quite successfully for ground attack.
05:06It was in the price range of many Western countries looking for a straightforward, effective fighter aircraft.
05:13And the Soviets knew it was likely to be manufactured in large numbers.
05:21The fourth of this group of new fighters was the McDonnell Douglas F-18 Hornet.
05:26It started life as a competitor to the F-16 in the lightweight fighter competition, but went into service with the US Navy as a multi-role fighter to replace both the F-4 Phantom and the A-7 Corsair attack aircraft.
05:43At the time, the workhorse fighter of the Soviet Union was the MiG-23, still a member of what was considered to be the third generation of jets.
06:00The new American fighters were a step beyond the performance of the MiG-23.
06:05They formed a fourth generation of fighter evolution.
06:08Soviet authorities watched their development closely, knowing that in some way they would have to make a move to counter the growing American superiority over the Soviet fighter force.
06:20The MiG-25, even though it was extremely fast and capable of excellent high altitude performance, was not the answer.
06:37It was an all-out interceptor and no amount of modification could transform it into a dogfighter.
06:42In the early seventies, work began in the Soviet Union on the development of a pair of aircraft to match the high and low end of the new American fighter generation.
07:02There was no shortage of information on the American project.
07:07A great deal could be found easily in specialist Western aviation magazines.
07:12Soviet intelligence made an all-out effort to acquire information on the latest developments.
07:17The Mikoyan company's design team was originally headed by Alexander Chumashenko.
07:32Vano Mikoyan, Artyom's nephew, was deputy chief designer.
07:36The Mikoyan design team job was to develop a fighter to counter the F-16.
07:42At the same time, the Suhoi Bureau was working on a larger, more complex and more expensive aircraft in the style of the F-15.
07:52The Mikoyan Bureau's fighter would be called the MiG-29 and the Suhoi company's the Su-27.
08:00The MiG-29 was designed around a central fuel tank.
08:14The whole structure did not have a fuselage in the traditional sense.
08:19The central section was designed as a lifting surface, generating 40% of the aircraft's total lift.
08:25Leading edge extensions were added to the wings for efficiency at the high angles of attack needed for combat aircraft.
08:36At first, the new aircraft was known as Object 9-12.
08:42In the course of its development, several alternative configurations were investigated, including one F-15 look-alike.
08:49But the layout originally chosen was found to be more aerodynamically efficient.
08:58Soviet design bureau were equipped with computer technology, but relied on it much less than their Western counterparts.
09:06There's a Russian term, Nakalyanki, which means working with a piece of paper on your knee.
09:11It's an approach highly respected in Russia, challenging the designers' resourcefulness,
09:17often giving outstanding results at a fraction of the cost of similar results in the West.
09:26On the other hand, in the 1970s and 80s, cost was not a real factor in the design of a new aircraft.
09:32Usually, Soviet designers were ordered to produce the best results possible, regardless of cost.
09:41In the Soviet Union, the defense industries in general, and the aircraft industry in particular, had great prestige.
09:49The design bureau attracted the brightest young graduates of universities and colleges.
09:53It was particularly prestigious to work at Mikoyan, but there were also material rewards.
10:01The salary was higher than average, and there were better housing opportunities.
10:05Construction work on the first prototype began in the mid-70s,
10:18at the Mikoyan bureau's prototype construction facility in North Moscow.
10:22It was built using conventional stress-skin aluminium construction.
10:43On the basis of experience gained in the construction of the MiG-23 and 25,
11:01automatic welding was widely used in the airframe structure.
11:06It made production much less labor-intensive than riveting.
11:13Composite materials were used in the structure of the MiG-29 to save weight where possible.
11:29Comprehensive load tests were carried out to make sure that the aircraft could stand the great stresses of dogfighting.
11:36It was designed to withstand more than 12 Gs, 12 times the force of gravity.
11:52Development of the radar-based weapons control system continued as the prototype was built.
11:58It was to be controlled by a pulse-doppler radar with look-down shoot-down capability.
12:06It was to have a conventional antenna.
12:09It was to have an infrared search and track system with a laser rangefinder.
12:14The pilot was to be equipped with a helmet-mounted sight.
12:24Four different Soviet aviation research institutes advised on aerodynamics, jet engines, construction materials and weapons and electronics.
12:34Michael Waldenberg, who was to take over as chief designer of the MiG-29 in 1982,
12:55once said that there is no way for a pilot to break the airframe of the MiG-29.
13:06The pilot would break first.
13:08This is the first prototype of the MiG-29.
13:18It's now on permanent display at the Monino Air Force Museum near Moscow.
13:24The prototype's nose wheel was in front of the jet intakes.
13:29It had to be moved back on production models,
13:31so that it wouldn't throw mud or dust from dirt runways directly into the engines.
13:44Unlike its direct competitor, the F-16, the MiG-29 has two engines.
13:50The Soviet Air Force insisted on two engines as a safety factor,
13:54because a number of single-engined aircraft had crashed in pilot training.
13:58The engines of the MiG-29s are not the traditional Tumanskys.
14:05They are Klimaf RD-33 turbofans,
14:09which produce a combined total of about 35,000 pounds of thrust.
14:14This gives the 29 an extremely high thrust-to-weight ratio of 1.12,
14:20which means that after take-off, it's capable of going straight up.
14:28The two engines are separated by a large airbrake,
14:35and in the center of the airbrake, there's a compartment that houses the drag chute,
14:40released on landing to slow the aircraft down.
14:42On October the 6th, 1977, chief test pilot, Alexander Fedorov,
14:56took off in the MiG-29 prototype 901 for its first flight.
15:00This flight was uneventful, but later in the test program, crashes would seriously injure both Fedorov and another test pilot, Valery Menitsky.
15:17After the first flight, there was the traditional Russian ceremony in which the test pilot is thrown in the air.
15:24The Mikoyan Bureau chose not to install a fly-by-wire control system in the MiG-29.
15:40They considered that fly-by-wire technology, in which a computer interprets the pilot's control movements
15:48before passing them on electronically to the controls, was not yet mature enough in the Soviet Union.
15:55But the MiG-29's control system is not simply mechanical.
16:00It is intelligent to some extent, a step halfway between a traditional control system and fly-by-wire.
16:07Soviet pilots consider lack of fly-by-wire is not necessarily a disadvantage.
16:13They point to examples where pilots have been killed because the computer would not let the pilot pull high enough G-forces to get out of trouble.
16:23They say that fly-by-wire makes an average pilot better.
16:27But they say an excellent pilot will get more from an aircraft without fly-by-wire.
16:33The Klimov jet engines of the MiG-29 have high thrust and relatively low fuel consumption.
16:41But they are smokier than their Western counterparts.
16:45Western pilots say that smoke gives away an aircraft in visual combat at longer range.
16:50But the Soviet Air Force never seemed to be concerned about it.
17:03The MiG-29 test and evaluation program lasted five years.
17:08It wasn't until mid-1982 that initial production began at the huge Gaz-30 plant in Moscow, about three miles away from Mikoyan headquarters.
17:21Unlike Western aircraft manufacturers, Russian Design Bureau are just that.
17:27Apart from building prototypes, they are not a combined design and production facility.
17:32Under the system developed by the Soviets, there is the Ministry of Aircraft Industry, the Design Bureau, and separate production factories.
17:47Although Mikoyan has no production facility of its own, traditionally, manufacture of MiG aircraft has begun at Gaz-30.
17:5530,000 people work at this plant.
18:003,000 of them don't manufacture aircraft.
18:03They make refrigerators and household goods.
18:06The first operational MiG-29s began to reach Soviet Air Force squadrons in August 1983.
18:20At that time, the flight test program was still going on.
18:25But initial problems of engine failure had been solved.
18:29Confidence in the aircraft was so high, and the need for it so pressing, that it was put into service before tests were complete.
18:36The first production aircraft was supplied to the Kubinka Air Regiment, located about 40 miles west of Moscow.
18:51For almost 50 years, NATO has assigned code names to new Soviet aircraft as they appear.
19:05Soviet aircraft manufacturers and the Soviet Air Force have followed them with interest.
19:10Some, like the frog-foot tag assigned to the Su-25, they found offensive.
19:18But the MiG-29s designers accepted the NATO name Fulcrum with pleasure.
19:24Russians use it as the aircraft's standard nickname.
19:27A two-seater trainer version of the MiG-29, the MiG-29-UB, was manufactured in the city of Gorky, 200 miles east of Moscow, where both the MiG-25 and 31 were produced.
19:55The Mikoyan Design Bureau won an important Soviet award for the MiG-29.
20:08Under the Soviet system of incentives for high quality work, the government allocated money to build apartment houses for Mikoyan employees.
20:17About 200 families were given new apartments.
20:25In 1984, Mikoyan's chief test pilot, Alexander Fyodorov, was killed when he was forced to eject at high altitude after his engine exploded.
20:39He was succeeded by Valery Minitsky, who had been his partner throughout the test program of the MiG-29.
20:47In 1988, a group of Mikoyan test pilots had an experience unique in Soviet aviation.
20:54They were given the job of taking these top secret deadly Soviet fighters to the West and showing them off to the rest of the world.
21:05MiG-29s had already been seen in the West once, but by a limited audience.
21:10Since 1974, there had been a traditional exchange visit of Soviet aircraft to Finland.
21:18In 1986, six MiG-29As visited a Finnish airbase and showed off their aerobatic capabilities to an audience of Western observers.
21:28A few of Western observers.
21:58The 1988 expedition was to a much larger forum, the Farnborough Air Show in England.
22:20Mikoyan pilots Anatoly Kvotschur, Roman Toskayev and Yuri Yermakov were chosen to fly a MiG-29A single-seater and a MiG-29UB trainer to England via Whitstock in East Germany.
22:50It was a major step for the Russians. They would, in effect, be competing against the top Western manufacturers of fighter aircraft, and the aircraft they were flying, though new to the West, were designed in the 1970s.
23:05Toskayev, Kvotschur and Yermakov took off on the last leg of their trip to England and were escorted into British airspace by tornadoes of the Royal Air Force.
23:20For pilots from a country with a reputation for secrecy, the Russians impressed aviation journalists and the public with their openness and direct, friendly manner.
23:36The MiG-29 also impressed the Farnborough crowd and caused a great deal of comment and controversy among rival fighter manufacturers.
23:46There were claims and counterclaims about whose aircraft was superior, but there was no doubt that the Russian pilots stole the show with routines that demonstrated the extreme maneuverability of the MiGs.
23:59Aviation experts and laymen made the most of the opportunity of seeing state-of-the-art Soviet aircraft at close quarters.
24:19Given the intensity of Soviet relationships with the West in the post-war years, it was extraordinary to see an American General Dynamics F-16 parked right next to its Soviet rival.
24:36There are two aerobatic teams in the Soviet Air Force, both based at Kubinka, outside Moscow.
24:42These pilots are the Swifts. They fly MiG-29s. The other team is the Russian Knights. They fly Sukhoi-27s.
24:52The Swifts fly a mixture of single and twoset- .
24:57The Swifts fly a mixture of single and two-seater MiGs generally in a group of six with a seventh
25:25aircraft flying solo.
25:53The Swifts were formed by volunteer operational pilots performing formation aerobatics in
25:59their spare time.
26:01Only relatively recently did they receive aircraft exclusively for aerobatic use, painted in
26:07their own colour scheme.
26:44These days Kubinka holds regular air shows that are open to the public.
26:53The standard of flying the audience sees is very high indeed.
26:58Past Soviet aerobatic teams have used MiG-17s and MiG-21s.
27:04Pilots of the Swifts say that the MiG-29 is the best precise formation aerobatic aircraft
27:10they have flown.
27:26Western pilots who have flown the MiG-29 say it achieves much the same performance as Western
27:48fighters equipped with fly-by-wire control systems.
27:51They say the higher thrust to weight ratio of the MiG and some superior design points make
27:57that possible.
28:06The major difference between the MiG and fly-by-wire Western aircraft is that the MiG's controls
28:13take a lot more physical effort to move.
28:16This doesn't mean that you need great strength, but full-time attention has to be paid to factors
28:23that in Western aircraft would be looked after by the computer.
28:26Western pilots find the agility of the Fulcrum amazing and say that its low-speed performance
28:53is at least equal to any Western fighter.
28:57They find the claim of engines outstanding in power and response, giving the aircraft tremendous
29:02acceleration.
29:09In formations like this, the distance between aircraft can be as little as 10 to 15 feet.
29:32Since MiG-29s have been appearing at Western air shows, they've created great interest.
29:48Among their repertoire are two extremely impressive maneuvers, the tail slide, in which the aircraft
29:54goes straight up and then slides down backwards, and the Cobra, in which an aircraft flying straight
29:59and level suddenly flips its nose up past the vertical and brings it down again.
30:05The Russians perform these maneuvers very close to the ground.
30:09It's spectacular, but it can also be dangerous.
30:16In 1989, at the Paris air show, Anatoly Kvotschur's engine failed to respond, coming out of a low-level
30:24tail slide, and he was forced to eject.
30:27His MiG-29 crashed and was destroyed, but in spite of the fact that he was so low that
30:33his parachute could not open fully, Kvotschur was flying again in a few hours.
30:45Kvotschur says that the sensation of ejection is very smooth.
30:49He should know.
30:50He was forced to eject once again, this time from a two-seater MiG.
30:54Again he was at low altitude, and again he survived.
30:59In 1993, at an air show at Fairford in England, two MiG-29s had a mid-air collision during a
31:06display.
31:07Again, both pilots survived.
31:28Russian pilots have at times been criticized for flying these aircraft too close to the
31:33edge of the flight envelope.
31:36The Russians contend that the great thrust ratio of the MiGs compared with Western fighters
31:42make such flying acceptably safe.
31:56This is the MiG-29's big cousin, the Sukhoi Su-27.
32:06It's the top end of the Russian fighter inventory, designed in Soviet days as a counter to the mighty
32:11American F-15 Eagle.
32:14It's an aircraft of stunning power and performance.
32:17It's much bigger than the MiG-29 and weighs 70% more.
32:31This mechanic standing between the Su-27's twin vertical fins gives some idea of its massive
32:38scale.
32:42Apart from being roomier, the cockpit layout of the Su-27 is similar to the MiG-29s.
32:49It has the same ejection seat.
32:51The concept of the control system is the same, apart from the fact that the Su-27 was designed
32:57from the beginning as a fly-by-wire aircraft.
33:07The weapons system of the Su-27 is basically the same as the MiG, but the missions of the
33:12two fighters are different.
33:14The MiG is a frontline fighter staying within a hundred kilometers of its own lines.
33:20The Su-27 was designed to penetrate deep into enemy airspace.
33:47In spite of its size, the Su-27 is incredibly manoeuvrable.
33:52This one is being flown by the great Sukhoi test pilot, Viktor Pugachev.
33:56This one is reaching out to you, it's being flown by by Krui Xero.
34:01It's been a very important part of my crew.
34:03It's been a very important part of your crew.
34:06It is the first time being flown by Krui Xero.
34:08I want to show you how I can do this.
34:13But it is a very important part of the steering team on the line.
34:17It's been the first time being flown by Krui Xero.
34:20Like the MiG-29, the Su-27 can perform the tail slide at low altitudes.
34:47At this point, where the aircraft starts to slide back, the engines of most Western fighters
34:52would stall.
34:54On the Su-27, it does not.
35:10The aircraft starts to slide back, the aircraft starts to slide back, the aircraft starts to slide back.
35:22The second maneuver that the two contemporary Russian fighters have become famous for is
35:46the Cobra, where the nose pitches up past vertical while the aircraft continues to fly
35:52forward.
35:53It looks absolutely impossible.
35:56Russian airshow crowds have come to accept the extraordinary handling of these aircraft
36:01as normal.
36:04This is ex-MIG pilot Anatoly Kvotschur, now flying Su-27s, making a low-speed pass at a very high
36:12angle of attack.
36:13For more information, you have to check in on the other side of the aircraft you've
36:26had.
36:27The Su-27 has a large airbrake behind the pilot's canopy.
36:54It can be used in flight for rapid speed changes as well as for landing.
37:24Since the late 80s, new versions of the MiG-29 have appeared.
37:35This one is the MiG-29K.
37:37K stands for the Russian word karavlny, which means naval.
37:42The MiG-29K was developed for use on the Soviet aircraft carrier Tbilisi.
37:48It has strengthened landing gear, folding wings and a tail hook.
37:56The Soviet Union had no great tradition of carrier-borne fighter aircraft.
38:02The standard Soviet carriers were the small Kiev class, which operated only helicopters and Yak-38 vertical take-off jets.
38:12Design work on the Tbilisi, which at more than 60,000 tons was to be large enough to operate conventional fighter aircraft, began in 1980.
38:24MiG and Sukhoi were commissioned to develop aircraft for carrier-based operation.
38:31This is the first flight of the MiG-29K, watched by MiG-29 chief designer Michael Waldenberg.
38:49For the MiG-29K, the Klimaf RD-33 engines were upgraded.
38:54Since it would not be landing on muddy airstrips, there was no need for the fully closing intake doors and the louvered intakes above the leading edge extensions.
39:09In the Soviet Union, it was usual to leave prototype aircraft unpainted, revealing details of the structure of the surface.
39:16Test pilot for the first flight was Tokhtar Obukirov, a native of Kazakhstan.
39:28After this flight, Obukirov went on to become the first Soviet pilot to make a conventional landing on a Soviet aircraft carrier.
39:37Carrier trials of the MiG-29K, held in November 1989, were successful.
39:44These days, things have changed in what used to be the Soviet Union.
39:49The Tbilisi is now called the Admiral Nikolai Kuznetsov.
39:54Things have changed for Tokhtar Obukirov too, since leaving his job as a Mikoyan test pilot, Obukirov has become the first cosmonaut of Kazakh nationality.
40:06He is now, in these post-Soviet years, the Minister for Defence for the Kazakhstan Independent Republic.
40:16The MiG-29M is another fly-by-wire variant.
40:20It carries the Russian equivalent of the most modern Western air-to-air missile.
40:25It's called the K-77, and its Western nickname is the Amoramski.
40:31The MiG-29M is not just an air superiority fighter.
40:50It has ground attack capability that brings it very close in performance to the American FAA team.
40:56But currently, the Russian Air Force doesn't have enough money to put the 29M into production.
41:03In the best traditions of capitalism, it's desperately looking for an export customer
41:08to help bring the next generation of the MiG-29 into existence.
41:13War, greed, politics, and personal hardship.
41:25The aerospace industry has endured it all.
41:28The struggles, the victories, the stories are next.
41:31Wings Over the World on the Discovery Wings Channel.
41:34Wings Over the World on the Discovery Wings Channel.