Mikoyan-Gurevich aircraft you can see
| Type | First flew | Built | UK museums |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 | 1947 | ~18,000 | 4 |
| Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21PF/SPS/PFM | 1956 | ~11,500 | 3 |
| MiG-23 & MiG-27 | 1967 | ~6,000 | 1 |
Mikoyan-Gurevich in brief
The MiG-15 prototype first flew on 30 December 1947. It used a Soviet copy of the Rolls-Royce Nene, sold to the USSR with British government approval. MiG-15s entered combat over Korea in November 1950. About 13,000 were built in the USSR, and more under licence in Czechoslovakia and Poland. The MiG-21 delta first flew in 1955 and became the most-produced supersonic jet.
Later types include the MiG-23 swing-wing fighter and the MiG-29. After 1991 the bureau merged with production plants, and in 2006 it became part of the state-owned United Aircraft Corporation.
Museums holding Mikoyan-Gurevich aircraft
| Museum | Mikoyan-Gurevich types | Adult entry | Airframes | Headline exhibit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Royal Air Force Museum MidlandsShifnal, Shropshire | 2 | Free | 78 | TSR-2 XR220, one of two survivors of the most gifted aircraft Britain ever cancelled, sharing floor space with the stainless-steel… |
| Fleet Air Arm MuseumYeovil, Somerset | 1 | £21 | 97 | Concorde 002 (G-BSST), the first British-assembled Concorde, which made her maiden flight from Filton in 1969 and now headlines a hall of… |
| IWM DuxfordCambridge, Cambridgeshire | 1 | £29 | 146 | Concorde 101 (G-AXDN), the pre-production development aircraft and the fastest Concorde of them all at Mach 2.23 — plus an SR-71A… |
| Midland Air MuseumCoventry, Warwickshire | 1 | £11 | 66 | Vulcan XL360 with cockpit access and volunteer-led tours (ask for the instrumentation talk), plus the Whittle jet heritage collection a… |
| National Museum Of FlightNorth Berwick, East Lothian | 1 | £15 | 47 | Concorde G-BOAA, which flew British Airways' first commercial supersonic service in 1976 and arrived here by barge and giant road-crawl… |
| Newark Air MuseumNewark, Nottinghamshire | 1 | £12.50 | 95 | Vulcan XM594, with cockpit tours occasionally given by former Vulcan aircrew, which reviewers describe with the reverence normally… |
| Norfolk and Suffolk Aviation MuseumBungay, Suffolk | 1 | £10 | 65 | Depends who you ask — the joy is the oddities. Come for the Bloodhound missiles and decoy rarities; stay for volunteer flight-simulator… |
Frequently asked
What does MiG stand for?
Mikoyan and Gurevich, after Artem Mikoyan and Mikhail Gurevich. The ‘i’ is the Russian word for ‘and’.
Did the MiG-15 use a British engine?
Its engine, the Klimov RD-45, was a copy of the Rolls-Royce Nene. Britain had supplied Nenes to the USSR with a manufacturing licence.
How many MiG-21s were built?
Over 11,000, making it the most-produced supersonic jet aircraft.