Great find, and love the caption on the second pic :diablo:
Since the Fishbeds on the first pic appear to have cannons on the left side of the fuselage, those should be J-7s. MiG-21F-13s have their single 30mm cannon on the right side, J-7s have one gun on each side. Can’t be too sure though, as there still is a fairing on the left side of the fuselage. Perhaps you can see it better on the original.

Ahaaaaa…. Good point, I hadn’t noticed that I’m ashamed to say. IIRC the mjority of MiG-21F-13’s only had a single gun.

1) that is the USN, we are talking about the PLAN here, and last time i checked, the PLAN aint world leaders in sonar tech and deep sea salavage ops.

I was simply responding to your assertion that it couldn’t be done by citing an example. It can be done. 😀

2) the USN fired that missile, and most likely tracked it until it hit the water. the hard part about deep sea salavage is not fishing things up, but find them in the first place.

i highly doubt that anyone would be able to passively pinpoint where a torpedo stopped from a long range away.

As far as I can recall that F-14 ditched in the sea, it was an accident. In that event the missiles would have seperated from the airframe. That however is all I remember, I’ll have to visit the stack of old NG mags in my garage to elaborate further. But to return to the subject of our torpedo. If you have a fairly accurate idea of where the torpedo landed, as in GPS/Loran/Glonass coordinate it is simply a matter of searching methodically. Sure, it is a huge and expensive taks but the reward is being able to Fox one of the enemies most sophisticated systems which can win you a battle or even the entire war. Surely you must be able to see why the of prospect of savaging or even anhiliating an enemy fleet makes such an effort worth while. Keep in mind what lenghts the USA went to to salvage the K-129. That was an enormously expensive undertaking and it involved technology that is by no means beyond the modern PLAN. Furthermore the US, at the time, did not know exactly where in the central Pacific the K-129 had gone down and they still found it at 5000 meters plus. Of course what was recovered from the K-129 is still classfied but some of the people involved in that operation are on record as saying that the recovery of a single missile was considered to have made it worth while to the USA. Never mind recovering codebooks and chypher mahcines. 😀

sure, no-one would ever pass up the opportunity to get their hands on other ppl’s kit to figure out what makes them tick, and if neccessary, how to defeat them. however, that is not what u were claiming before.

That was my first post on the subject of this torpedo this is my second you must be confusing me with somebody else 😀

think about it, if this isnt the case, the USAF would be REing Mig29s and Su27s to use at top gun instead of having to look all over for old and abandoned examples that dont even work, or the USN would not need to tinker about with SM2/tomahawk hybrids to uses as missile drones if they can just cheaply RE the russian KH missiles the russians sold them (?).

Why would the USA want to RE MiG-29’s when they have as good or better aircraft them selves and can buy MiG-29’s by the batch from disallusioned ex-Soviet client states and they have done that sure enough. The US interest in the MiG-29 was and still is testing it to find out what it can do, how maneuverable it is, how reliable are it’s weapons and most importantly of all how best to jam its communications systems, radar, IR search system and missiles. 😀

yeah, so it basically puts the FC-1 on par with the MiG-21 Bison, does’nt it ? no new materials or technology (basically all metal) for its structure, Chinese avionics 😀 , and already known flight characteristics (remember all the stunts in the first flight test itself ! made all Jehadis sooo happy ! :D), with a few BVR weapons makes it about as smashing as our Bisons.

When comparing the venarable MiG-21 Bison with the FC-1 let’s not forget the FC-1s considerably more modern aerodynamic design as well as its, superor warload and a newer superior engine. 😀

Can PLAAF add some symbolic pictures on the aircraft,like chinese dragon or majestic looking tiger.It will makr their squadron more exciting

I don’t think the PLAAF/PLANAF units have much latitude when it comes to unique markings. All they usually apply in the way of markings is the star-n-bar and the bort number. One of the few units that carries a spectacular looking unit badge is the PLAAF 1st division who’s J-11,J-8 and J-7 fighters carriy a big tiger badge on the nose, and sometimes the tail. For the longest time the PLAAF painted its aircraft plain snow-white all over but western/russian style camouflag patterns are rare, even today.

American approval would be more like it. Until the swedes do not make their own engine and a few other critical components, they would not have much of a leeway in increasing sales.

And when you come to American approval, why do you think the Americans would allow Sweden to walk away with the cash if they are okay with the sale ?? They would try to sell their own stuff then. That is the catch-22 afa Sweden & Gripen is concerned.

Give the Americans some credit for subtlety. 🙂 I doubt they’d be so blatant as to block the Swedes by refusing to sell them components and then go ahead and sell F-16’s (or whatever) to the customer instead. The Americans have done all sorts of things to try and grab sales away from SAAB. Most of it has consisted of extremely generous financing opportunities to prospective customers (aka. subsidies courtesy of the US taxpayer) which the Swedes can not match. Interestingly American products have still been turned down in favor of the Gripen inspite of these incentives. I suppose “At least it’s not 100% Amercian” is a selling point for the Swedes.

There was the MiG-21MF, which China never had plans or tools for that. That became the J-7C and D. But the plane’s deficiency in agility compared to earlier J-7 variants put a stop to that.

But that’s about it. Just about everything else has an actual license.

Having spent some time compiling line drawings of the JJ-7 I am convinced it relied heavily on input gleaned from a Soviet MiG-21U, even if it probably used a J-7B or J-7IIA airframe as the basis. The similarities are just to great. Still the JJ-7 is far less similar to the MiG-21U than the J-7C/D is to the MiG-21MF.

For some reason I like the JJ-7’s latest incarnation, the JL-9 alot. It has to be the most elegant MiG-21 derivative ever:

I have a MiG-21PF manual in Russian. No MF or Bis though.

I was hoping somebody sells this stuff, I’d think it’s been declassified by now.