Nice pics killerbean!!
I can not but wonder how that extended bow is gong to hold up in rough seas???

I don’t think that is a problem. It was said that old Kievs tended to have a sternwise trim due to design flaw, maybe new bow balances it out…

I wonder about seakeeping, though. Kievs were bit low on freeboard and Vikramaditya has more topweight. Well, I presume they have calculated changes to metacentric height etc. I understand they will be doing rolling tests soon-ish.

hmmm……starting 2004…its now 8 years.
It would have been much better if the Russian Navy had invested that money and time in Pr.11356 class and upgrading their pr.956 and pr.1155 ships with more AA weapons

As TR1 said, little effort is probably going to be used on Sovs anymore. They see very little deployments.

At some point, you need to design & build new ships with new systems anyway. You don’t want too long discontinuity, otherwise everyone with experience quits, retires or dies. Sure, 22350’s are progressing slowly, but it’s not like anyone else is rushing either (well, except the Chinese).

if you want to race the two navies’ respective records of preserving 20th century capital ships, the scoreboard doesn’t look very good for the royal navy.

I’ve been told that Brits have always viewed warships with something of an expendable commodity, seldom targets of signifant public emotional attachments. It’s a shame that so few of the very signifant 20th century warships have survived, but much of that period money was tight, and many of the ships which saw signifant service were too banged up to be preserved – it was pretty much same for USA. Preserved capital ships are rare outside of US anyway, so it’s not just British. And I suspect that the number in US is excessive in long term anyway and some of the currently preserved ships will end up as scrap. Look at state of USS Olympia, despite her uniqueness, no money is available for maintenance anymore.

The paint was to lessen emissions, not increase them. You don’t want to reflect or radiate energy when trying to sneak in and out.

That may have been the idea, but in practice SR-71 could not really ‘sneak in’. Despite various RCS reduction measures, it was very visible on radars…

I dunno about a new top gun movie. But I was quite impressed with the opening of “behind enemies lines” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKsreHMX3xE) thinking maybe the balkans could play a role in a new top gun movie.

That’s visually very good scene, though it repeats the old cliché about missiles following the plane minutes and minutes. Too bad the rest of the movie was garbage.

In general, Hollywood never gets air combat right – and it got WORSE after they began using CGI – so I’m not looking forward for the new Top Gun.

Just a few specific comments, largely based on book “MiG-21 in Finnish Air Force”, which was written by Engineer Lt.Col Jyrki Laukkanen, who flew over 1200 hours in MiG-21. I will mostly reply to points where what I have read and heard differs from what has been written elsewhere.

Israeli pilots test-flew the MiG-21, entering into mock combat with their own Mirages. The MiG-21 was found to be underpowered, though fairly maneuverable at high altitude. The MiG possessed excellent acceleration which was achieved through its small size and aerodynamic refinement rather than through a high-thrust engine. Its range was also very limited.

Finnish experience was pretty much totally opposite. MiG’s engine was somewhat slow to response to throttle and pilots were adviced not to throttle back too much, especially in low altitudes. By contrast, climb speed and high altitude performance were very good. From the brakes, 10 000 metres was reached under three minutes. This was with F-13 and BIS had better performance. By contrast, the Draken had very good acceleration and was very fast at low altitudes, but its performance wavered quickly at high altitudes. MiG did not have a great range, but with drop tanks it was apparently not seen as major problem.

In August 1966, an Iraqi pilot defected to Israel in a late-model MiG-21F-13 (Fishbed-C). The IAF began studying the plane. The first to fly it was – who else – Danny Sha-pira, the IAF’s veteran chief test pilot.
The systems in the cockpit were bulky and unwieldy. The pilot’s view of the out-side world was almost completely blocked off, and turning his head sideways was difficult. The Russians believed that the pilot should look forward at all times.

According to Laukkanen, visibility from F-13 was “fairly good” (it got worse in subsesquent models). Criticism about the cockpit is true though, Laukkanen mentions that even after intense training, pilots would sometimes mess up some switches with semi-amusing results (such as premature deployment of brake chute).

On August 16, 1966, an Iraqi defector landed a MiG-21 in perfect working order on the Hazor tarmac and Dani Shapira, the IAF’s chief test pilot, took the MiG through every nook and cranny of its flight envelope. “We found out that at high speeds it had trouble maneuvering as well as the Mirage, which meant that we had to try to get it into tight turns at high speeds. Also, at slow speeds it had a tendency to spin out, and at tight turns at low altitudes it would snap and flick into the ground.”

Part about the spin sounds like complete baloney. Laukkanen says the aircraft is “very spin resistant” and almost impossible to get into any kind of post-stall gyration, unless pilot specificially wants. No accidental spins ever happened and spins were not trained at all. This was in stark contrast to Draken, which had very dangerous stall maneuver.

As an example how easy flying characteristics MiG-21 was thought to have, is that Finns soon stopped using any intermediate trainers for MiG-21. Pilot would go straight from Fouga Magister to MiG-21. Now, MiG’s airspeed indicator began where Fouga’s ended, so this was bit of a culture shock at first, but pilots adjusted quickly. Only challenge were the landings, MiG had high landing speeds and needed a long runway.

disorganized, but insisted that the plane was easy to fly. The first flight confirmed his words; it was easy. To Danny, it felt like the Mirage, but was a bit faster and had a lower peak altitude of 40,000 feet. When Danny began to maneuver, he discovered how the MiG differed from the Mirage. The MiG was difficult to steer at speeds over 500 knots. Danny had to use tremendous strength on the stick to steady the plane in turns, especially in sharp ones. At greater speeds the danger increased. The nose and the right wing pulled downward.

Again complete disagreement. F-13 could reach 15 kilometres (50 000 feet) without problems and close to 20 kilometres with zoom climbs (but such endeauvor would eat up almost all the fuel). Though, I’ve heard that in hot, thick air of Middle East, aircraft generally gave less performance than specified in the manuals so this may explain the discrepancy. Laukkanen’s opinion about control forces are completely opposite, with exception with rudder which could get heavy at high speeds (F-13 had totally mechanical rudder – very unusual for a Mach 2 fighter! BIS had hydraulic rudder). He does mention that mechanical backup system had very heavy control forces.

However, the MiG-21 was found to be highly susceptible to battle damage, having a tendency to burn or explode after being struck only a few times with 30-mm cannon fire. On the opposite, a Mirage was hit by the Soviet-built Atoll infrared-guided air-to-air missile fired from an Iraqi MiG-21 over an Iraqi airbase where the Mirage was patrolling. The Mirage’s tailpipe suffered extensive damage, but the pilot was able to return to the base.]

Just a quick comment here, this kind of comparison is meaningless as a missile and cannon shells have totally different damage profile and proves nothing. Plenty of single-engined fighters have survived their tailpipe getting hit by an IR guiding missile. By contrast, 30mm hit is extremely destructive and I doubt any fighter could survive “few hits”. Hollywood movie air combat never gets this right, they have jets armed with weak machineguns.

Steve Ritchie, a Phantom ace, considers the MiG-21’s speed and turning ability to be excellent, but the MiG has roll rate troubles at maximum speed, as well as longitudinal stability problems.

I’ve never heard of any “longitudinal stability problems”, quite the contrary, Laukkanen thinks the longitudinal stability as excellent. “Roll rate at maximum speed” sounds like relatively inconsequental, given that fighters seldom, if ever, operate near their maximum speed, much less dogfight there. Some sort of translation error?

“Modern Fighter Combat” (1987) by Mike Spick.

The controls are heavy, to a degree where a fair amount of muscle is needed. The pilot’s view out is not good, rear vision is almost non-existent and even the view ahead is restricted by both avionics displays and a heavy canopy bow. A fairly low fuel fraction reduces the combat radius without external fuel to a ridiculously short distance. The performance above 20,000 feet was described as poor.
The truth is that the MiG-21 is a very ordinary fighter and had it been of Western origin, it would have probably sunk without trace prior to 1970.
At the same time, the latest MiG-21bis (Fishbed-N) has a more powerful engine and a far superior thrust-to-weight ratio. Its performance has to improve dramatically and it must be a formidable dogfighter.

Suffice it to say that almost all there sounds like complete garbage.

Now, most of what Laukkanen writes is about F-13; about BIS, it had more power but it was also much heavier. I’ve read that for pilots used to F-13 it felt very cumbersome at first, but after a while they learned to maneuver it close to what F-13 was capable of.

About the maintenance, MiG was not designed to be maintenance-friendly at all but F-13 was so simple that the maintenance demands were pretty modest – about 20 hours of maintenance for 1 flight hour, after routine was estabilished. Draken, by contrast, was designed for easy maintenance but the ’60s era electronics were so unreliable that maintaining the plane was much more laborous. I’ve never read of any specific engine problems for the MiG’s, outside of some poorly built MiG-21UM’s which were turned down. However, Draken’s engine seems to have been more reliable overall.

FAF loss stats: 2 Drakens out of 48 lost (1 to pilot error, 1 written off due mechanical problem), 11 MiGs lost out of 54, to all causes. Don’t have the breakdown here, probably about 6 to 8 were mechanical problems, mostly engine.

5 years was a generic term, it could + or – 5 yrs but it will surely happen. You can only take a refit so far. There are going to be problems. The hull is over 30 yrs old now and has been rotting away.

“It’s not the years, it’s the mileage” 🙂

Hull is 30 years old, true, but that doesn’t mean much in itself. India’s present carrier was laid down in 1944. Gorshkov has seen less than 10 years of service. No fundamental reason why it couldn’t serve say, 30 years, assuming that the refit is done properly.