Customer Reviews

MiG-21 'Fishbed': The World's Most Widely Used Supersonic Fighter (Aerofax)

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3 star:		(1)
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The author have put everything in a nutshell. Brief and concise text help readers get some idea of what an airplane and the operation history of the Fishbed is. The load of 3-views at the end of the book is impressive. However, because of its limited size, not much detail on the vast number of varients of the Fishbed family is included. Scale modellers are disappointed because it lacks detail shots nor description of various parts of the varients, nor scale plan in popular scales. I am thinking of the technical drawings of the "old Aerofax" minigraph and datagraph series that have disappear in the "new" Aerofax titles. Finally, if you can afford only one book on the Fishbed, this is not the choice.

Plenty of historical facts that includes information on prototypes and updated versions. The technical specs on each variant are also included as well as color pictures of the variants. It even has a reference section of all the countries that use it and the variants used by their air forces. This is an excellent book for anyone interested in the Mig-21.

The MiG -21 has been produced in greater numbers than any post WW2 fighter plane. It is fast, small, agile and proven to be a nasty surprise to the West, who typically felt the Soviets could not produce good fighters. It began production in 1959, with over 10,000 being built. Some are still in service today.

The Aerofax series of books offer highly glossy paper, quality photos, line drawings, statistics and very, very detailed narrative. It can be dry sometimes. There are 12 pages of color photos, four pages of color plates showing paint patterns used by the Soviets and other nations. I think that modelers would find this a very helpful book for details on each version of the plane as well as color schemes.

Yefim Gordon has penned a lot of books on Soviet Aviation. I have enjoyed all of his books in the Aerofax series. Highly recommended for aviation enthusiasts, historians and those who want to learn more about 1950's/60's/70's jet fighters.