To cut a long story short, the cold war was a bizarre period of time that emerged from the allies failing to agree on who should decide what happened to Germany and the liberated lands of Europe immediately after World War 2. Nothing really happened – there was no real war, yet it fuelled a silent, super long distance game of tug-o-war between Russia and the United States, with Britain and everyone else sandwiched in between. If you weren’t communist, you were Russia’s enemy. Meanwhile, if you weren’t American or at the very least from Western Europe, you were 100% a communist. The US is said to have spent more than $8 trillion on military expenditures alone, and raced the Russians to the moon in order to try and bankrupt them into submission. Without delving any further into the greasy details – of which there are nearly five decades worth – it was a completely bonkers ordeal but without such a period of intensive rivalry much of the 20th century technology that we were graced with simply wouldn’t have existed if it weren’t for their metaphorical sausage-swinging. That (I think) brings us not so graciously to the subject in question.
We find ourselves on the grounds of an aircraft factory in North Wales, established during WW2 and subsequently continuing into the cold war and the present day, thousands of aircraft were built here for the British Royal Air Force and the site continues to produce business jets and aircraft parts to this day. It would without doubt have not only been on the German’s radar but eventually on the Russians as the British were considered very much the United States sidekicks and therefore not to be trusted.
It’s somewhat ironic, then that three Russian fighter jets find their final resting place here. The jets were decommissioned in the 90’s when the cold war came to a definitive end as the Berlin wall came crumbling down, and the Soviet era finally became a thing of the past. Unused lumps of gloriously over-compensating war machines on both sides of the world were stood down from their post after years of traversing the skies teasing each other with their ‘look what we can do now’ cash-guzzlers. In America, the Arizona desert is quite literally plastered with aircraft that never found use in the cold war. The same can be said for the Soviets, but many of theirs were scrapped to make better use of the resources (they are socialists after all).
We start with a lone MiG-27 jet, codenamed Flogger by NATO, decorated in desert camouflage. Apparently these soviet jets where shipped here a few decades ago with the intention of getting as many as possible airworthy for eventual sale but all work has since stopped and most of the planes still remain. There’s a lot of money in private aviation sales and all of the right people reside here on site to get old girls like this back in the air. The trouble is, there’s not enough resources to keep our beloved RAF heritage planes in the air, let alone soviet relics. Besides, who on earth is going to be able to find the manual for one of these things!?
The MiG-27 was a dedicated ground attack version of the MiG-23. Through the decades the Soviets produced and sold these fighters as exports to countries in the east, but the 27 wasn’t a big money maker, as most countries opted for the MiG-23BN instead, so it saw very little service outside of Russia. In fact the aircraft type was only exported to India and Sri Lanka who gave it the nickname ‘Bahadur’ during the Kargil war between India & Pakistan in 1999.
Its main role was to conduct precision air strikes in battle while tackling the adversary’s air defences. Soviet forces used the MiG-27 in Afghanistan due to lack of adversary’s, elsewhere it had been replaced by the iconic MiG-29 in almost every sense. Nearly all of them have now been retired, and it remains in service only with the Kazakh Air Forces in the ground attack role. All Russian, Indian and Ukrainian MiG-27s have been retired.
The yellow & red markings of this particular jet coded '23' suggest it remained in use with the soviet air force. In the few cases that the mig-27 was exported, it appears to have only been displayed in grey. There's a chance given the colours of this one that it was used during the Afghanistan conflicts in the 80's.
The iconic red star. The symbol that became one of the most prominent of the Soviet Union, adorning nearly all official buildings, military equipment, awards and insignia. The 'Order of the Red Star' was awarded to Red Army and Soviet Navy personnel for "exceptional service in the cause of the defense of the Soviet Union in both war and peace". Although generally associated with the darker days of the soviet era, Putin resurrected the star as a permanent symbol for his armed forces in 2002.
Looking inside the Tumanski R-29 Soviet turbojet aircraft engine that was developed in the early 1970s. It enabled the mig 27 to hit mach 2.4 achieving around 1,885 km/h. Not too shabby!
