Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-1
The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-1 was a Soviet high-altitude interceptor, the first production aircraft of the Mikoyan and Gurevich bureau. Designed around a large Mikulin inline engine and built largely of steel tube and wood to save light alloys, the I-200 prototype flew on 5 April 1940 and was ordered into production before its dangerous handling faults could be cured. Only one hundred were built in 1940 before the improved MiG-3 took over the line; issued to fighter regiments in 1941, most were destroyed in the opening days of the German invasion.
Why It Mattered
The MiG-1 was the first design of the Mikoyan and Gurevich bureau to achieve production status. It was designed to a January 1939 Soviet Air Forces requirement for a high-altitude fighter with an inline engine. To save weight and drag, its designers built the smallest possible aircraft around the intended powerplant. The first prototype flew on 5 April 1940, and on 24 May it attained 648.5 km/h at 6,900 m. It was ordered into production before the defects found in flight testing could be fixed, and it reached Soviet fighter regiments in 1941.
Design Notes
The aircraft began in Nikolai Polikarpov's construction bureau in June 1939 as the I-200, and further work was assigned that November to the new Experimental Construction Section (OKO) headed by Artem Mikoyan and Mikhail Gurevich. It was a low-wing monoplane of mixed construction: to minimize demand on strategic materials such as aluminum, the rear fuselage was wood and the front fuselage a welded steel-tube truss covered by duralumin. The intended Mikulin AM-37 was not yet available, so the less powerful AM-35A had to be substituted. Armament was one 12.7 mm UBS and two 7.62 mm ShKAS machine guns, all fuselage-mounted. Trials revealed serious defects, including heavy controls, poor longitudinal stability, an excessively hot cockpit and a dangerous propensity to flick from a stall into a spin from which recovery was almost impossible. Only a few of the ordered improvements could be made before production began, among them self-sealing fuel tanks and, from the ninth aircraft, a rear-sliding canopy that could be jettisoned in flight.
Operational History
Production was ordered on 31 May 1940, and the I-200 completed its state trials at the first attempt in August. Production ran to one hundred aircraft, the last completed in December 1940; on 9 December 1940 the first hundred I-200s were designated MiG-1, after the initials of Mikoyan and Gurevich. By 22 February 1941, 89 had been issued to regular fighter units. On 1 June 1941, 77 were on hand, of which only 55 were operational; eight more were assigned to the Soviet Navy, and only four pilots were trained to handle the MiG-1 or the MiG-3. Little is known of the MiG-1's performance in combat, as most were likely destroyed during the opening days of Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941.
Afterlife
The improvements developed during the production run were gathered in a fourth prototype, which first flew on 29 October 1940. They entered production from the 101st I-200, designated the MiG-3 on 9 December 1940, and the first production MiG-3 followed on 20 December 1940. Production of the MiG-1 itself ended with the hundredth aircraft in December 1940, as the line passed to the improved MiG-3. One MiG-1 was still in the VVS inventory as late as 1944, when it was recorded as withdrawn, and the type's retirement is dated to that year. Its lasting place is as the bureau's first production aircraft: the name MiG, derived from its designers' initials, began with this small production run.