Father of the MiG: the fighter designer who ruled the sky in an instant
Stalin asked: "What fool will sell us his secrets?" The fool was Britain's Labour government. Mikoyan flew to London in 1946 to buy jet engines; the reverse-engineered Rolls-Royce Nene became the heart of the MiG-15.
From a lathe operator in a remote Armenian village to founder of the Soviet Union's foremost fighter design bureau. In 1939 he co-founded OKB-155 (MiG) with Mikhail Gurevich; his MiG-15 mastered the skies over Korea and his MiG-21 became the most-produced supersonic fighter in history. The younger brother of Politburo member Anastas Mikoyan, he rose on his own terms: twice Hero of Socialist Labor, six Stalin Prizes, the Lenin Prize, and colonel-general. MiG aircraft set 55 world records.
Career Timeline
- 1923–28Lathe operator at Rostov and Moscow Dynamo plants
- 1931–37Graduated Zhukovsky Air Force Academy; built Oktyabryonok light aircraft
- 1939–41Co-founded OKB-155 (MiG); developed MiG-1 and MiG-3 fighters
- 1946–53Acquired Rolls-Royce Nene; MiG-15 dominated jet combat in Korean War
- 1953–64MiG-17, MiG-19, MiG-21 — transition to supersonic fighter era
- 1956–68Twice Hero of Socialist Labor; six Stalin Prizes; Lenin Prize; USSR Academy of Sciences
- 1964–70MiG-23, MiG-25, MiG-27 — variable-geometry and high-speed interceptor generation
The Rolls-Royce Nene — How a British Engine Opened the Soviet Jet Age
In 1946, Soviet jet engine technology lagged far behind the West. Copies of captured German BMW 003 and Jumo 004 engines were underpowered and unreliable, incapable of lifting the aerodynamically advanced airframes Soviet designers were producing. Aviation minister Mikhail Khrunichev and designer Alexander Yakovlev proposed to Stalin that the USSR simply buy advanced jet engines from Britain. Stalin asked, "What fool will sell us his secrets?" But he gave his assent.
In the autumn of 1946, Artyom Mikoyan and engine designer Vladimir Klimov were dispatched to London to acquire the Rolls-Royce Nene, a centrifugal-flow turbojet that was then the most reliable and powerful engine of its kind in the world. To Stalin's astonishment, Clement Attlee's Labour government and its pro-Soviet trade minister Stafford Cripps were perfectly willing to provide technical data and a manufacturing licence. Sample engines and complete blueprints were shipped to Moscow.
Klimov reverse-engineered the Nene into the RD-45 (later refined as the VK-1), and Mikoyan's OKB-155 built the swept-wing I-310 prototype around it: first flown on 30 December 1947. This was the MiG-15. Deployed to Korea in November 1950, the MiG-15 outclassed every straight-wing jet in the US inventory, carving out "MiG Alley" over the Yalu River and forcing the Americans to rush the F-86 Sabre into theatre. Rolls-Royce later attempted to claim £207 million in licence fees; it never received a penny.