Customer Reviews

MiG Aircraft Since 1937 (Putnam's Russian aircraft)

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This book is classic Putnam Aviation all the way. Detailed coverage of all production MIG aircraft through the MIG-29 series and many prototypes, with very detailed technical information. Addtional appendices cover weapons and engines. More technical than Belyakov and Marmain's MIG Fifty Years of Secret Aircraft Design, Gunston and Gordon's book is not as readable but far more detailed. Interstingly, the two books differ in a number of details, most notably in regards to Soviet aircraft world records.

I recommend this book to all fans of the Putnam series and to anyone interested in SOviet aviation and the Cold War.

The opportunity of unprecedented access to former URSS archives has produced the best book on the history of the MiG bureau. All designs created by the fertile genius of Artyon I. Mikoyan and Mikhail I. Gurevich are thoroughly presented with many historical details of their initial development. Even if the book covers all aircrafts and missiles, the thickest part of the work is dedicated to jet models, prototypes and experimental planes built after the II WW. In this respect, the volume is very exhaustive because it fixes many obscured points about production variants and aircraft designations, giving a clear picture of design evolution, previously blurred in the West for the impossibility of approaching directly sources of informations or files (there was a cold war, intelligence denial was a serious matter, do you remember?). Many photographs and drawings are published, some of them for the first time.

In the end, this is the most comprehensive book on MiG bureau, in line with Bill Gunston's style, whose dedication to excellency we all know about, even if the treatise on II World War projects is not so extensive. Highly recommended for Soviet aviation buffs.