Soviet Forces

Red ground crew.

From the latter part of 1941 - very early in the war - ground crew members of the Red Army's 180 Fighter Aviation Regiment, 1 Squadron, pose with Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-1 fighter. The regiment was redesignated Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment 30 in 1943. If the aircraft was, as identified, a MiG-1 (rather than an example of its more numerous but very similar successor, the MiG-3) it was a rarity; only about 100 MiG-1 were produced, as compared with over 3,000 MiG-3. The MiG-1/3 were difficult aircraft to fly, suffering as they did from significant longtitudidal instability owing to their short length and the related imbalance between the long, heavy nose section and the short, relatively light tail (not visible here). This was an aircraft that might have been loved by a natural pilot of the standard of Manfred von Richthofen, who might have been able to exploit its eccentricities; I suspect that the majority of Soviet fighter pilots were happy to see the back of it when better fighters became available. Still, the early MiGs gave the Soviets some meaningful modern fighter capacity in the very early days of their war. Best regards, JR.