November 12: The Soviet Military Aircraft Designer

Aviation engineer Mikhail Gurevich, who co-designed the USSR’s MiG (Mikoyan-Gurevich) line of warplanes, died on this date in 1976, age 82. The first generation of MiGs destroyed 50 percent of German aircraft attacking Moscow in 1941. Gurevich and Artem Mikoyan (an Armenian), engineering partners for 25 years, also designed the post-war MiG jet fighter series, including the MiG-15, which fought in the skies over Korea and was the most widely produced jet plane ever made (18,000 planes), and the MiG-17, which challenged supersonic American fighters over North Vietnam in the 1960s. Gurevich was elaborately awarded several Stalin Prizes and the Lenin Prize. He is also listed at “The Gay Russian Hall of Fame” website, and NATO code-named the MiG-15 “Fagot [sic] B” -- but Jewdayo is unable on short order to determine the meaning or accuracy of these pieces of information. To see the MiG-15 in flight with a patriotic Soviet musical background, look below. “Throughout the [Korean] conflict, many MiG-15s were covertly flown by experienced Soviet pilots. When encountering American opposition, these pilots often were evenly matched. As many of the American pilots were veterans of World War II, they tended to have the upper hand when facing MiGs flown by North Korean or Chinese pilots.” —About.com