Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-3
The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-3 was a Soviet high-altitude interceptor developed from the MiG-1 to remedy its faults, taking over the Factory No. 1 production line in December 1940. More than 3,100 were built in little over a year — the published accountings differ on the total — but the Eastern Front air war was fought at low altitude, where the MiG-3 was outclassed and lightly armed, and production was ended in favour of the Ilyushin Il-2. The surviving aircraft finished the war with the Soviet air defence forces.
Why It Mattered
The MiG-3 was developed from the MiG-1 to remedy the problems found during that fighter's development and operations, and it took over the production line at Factory No. 1 in Moscow in December 1940. It was designed as a high-altitude fighter-interceptor, built around the Mikulin AM-35A engine. By the opening of the German invasion on 22 June 1941, some 981 MiG-3s were in service with the Soviet Air Forces, the air defence forces and Naval Aviation. The fighting on the Eastern Front, however, was generally at lower altitudes, where the MiG-3 was inferior to the German Messerschmitt Bf 109 and to most of its Soviet contemporaries. The Military Aviation Museum records that, having to fight outside its intended role, the type suffered the highest loss rate, as a percentage of airframes built, of any fighter in Soviet service.
Design Notes
The changes were gathered in the fourth prototype of the I-200, which took to the air on 29 October 1940 and passed its State acceptance trials. The engine was moved forward 100 mm to improve longitudinal stability, and the dihedral of the outer wing panels was increased by one degree to increase lateral stability. An additional 250-litre fuel tank was fitted beneath the pilot's seat, and the pilot received 9 mm armour plate behind the seat. Power plant and armament initially remained unchanged from the MiG-1: a Mikulin AM-35A engine and three cowling guns, one 12.7 mm and two 7.62 mm machine guns. The structure kept a significant amount of wood, which the Military Aviation Museum attributes to wartime shortages of aluminium alloys and to the Soviet Union's abundant timber. Production aircraft proved over 250 kg heavier than the MiG-1, which cost manoeuvrability, and their measured ceiling and range fell short of what had been required.
Operational History
The first production MiG-3 was completed on 20 December 1940, and the type was first delivered to a VVS regiment in April 1941. Production rose steeply, peaking by June 1941 at 25 aircraft every 24 hours. When Germany invaded on 22 June 1941, 917 MiG-3s stood in the border military districts and 64 more with Naval Aviation, yet on 1 June there had been only 494 trained pilots for the 1,029 aircraft on strength. Below its design altitude the MiG-3 was outclassed, and in the autumn of 1941 it was pressed into service as a fighter-bomber, a role for which it was totally unsuited. Aleksandr Pokryshkin, credited with 53 official air victories, recorded a number of his victories while flying a MiG-3 at the beginning of the war. The production total is accounted differently by the sources: the Gunston accounting gives approximately 3,120 built to 23 December 1941, with 50 more completed from component stocks in 1942, while Wikipedia gives 3,422 in all. Production was terminated in favour of the Ilyushin Il-2 after Stalin demanded more Il-2s, a switch eased because the MiG-3's AM-35A engine was closely related to the Il-2's AM-38. The survivors were concentrated in the PVO air defence forces, where low-altitude performance mattered less, and the last were withdrawn from service before the end of the war.
Afterlife
By the start of 1945 no MiG-3s remained with combat units, the PVO's last aircraft having gone by 1 January 1945. The Russian company Aviarestoration has rebuilt three MiG-3s, all of them fitted with Allison V-12 engines in place of the original Mikulin. One is held by the Military Aviation Museum in Virginia: the type's sole example in North America, and one of very few intact MiG-3s anywhere. That aircraft, serial 3457, was reassembled in Russia using parts gathered from as many as six wreck sites across the Murmansk and Loukhi regions, and it wears the livery it carried when it crash-landed during September 1941. A second rebuild, based on an aircraft shot down in 1942, returned to the air around the beginning of 2010 and stayed in Russia, and a MiG-3 replica is displayed at the Central Air Force Museum at Monino.