On February 1, 1950, the MIG fighter reached the speed of sound for the first time
Speed is one of the key qualities of a combat aircraft. It is in this case that the "arms race" becomes a race in the truest sense of the word. Whoever is faster is closer to victory.
The speed rivalry of combat aircraft has been going on constantly since their inception. Soon after the end of World War II, the first jet aircraft approached the speed of sound - about 1191 km per hour. In October 1947, the Americans were the first to break the sound barrier on an experimental Bell X-1 jet aircraft. A year later, destroyed by the recent war, the Soviet Union caught up with wealthy Americans - our experimental La-176 jet in a dive exceeded the speed of sound for the first time.
From now on, the task arose to bring not only experimental, but also army jet aviation closer to the speed of sound. The first serial jet aircraft in the USSR was the MiG-15 fighter, created in 1947 at the Mikoyan and Gurevich design bureau. Two years later, the combat vehicle went into mass production, and at one of the government meetings on aviation, Stalin personally ordered all further work on improving jet fighters to be carried out on the basis of this particular aircraft. "We have a good MiG-15, and there is no point in creating new fighters in the near future, it is better to follow the path of modernizing the MiG …", the leader of the Soviet country said then.
One of the tasks of modernizing the MiG was the issue of overcoming the sound barrier. The production MiG-15 only approached this task and reached a maximum speed of 1,042 km / h. The new experimental MiG received the name SI-1 and a swept wing located at an angle of 45 degrees to the aircraft body.
The first flight of the prototype took place on January 14, 1950 at the airfield near Moscow in Zhukovsky (this experimental airfield still operates today). Lieutenant Colonel Ivan Timofeevich Ivaschenko, Hero of the Soviet Union, was appointed test pilot of the new aircraft.
Ivan Ivaschenko. Photo: wikipedia.org
The first flight of Ivan Ivashchenko on January 14, 1950 on an experimental SI-1 fighter was successful. The new aircraft exceeded the speed of the latest modifications of the serial MiG-15 by 40 km / h. On February 1, 1950, in the next flight, Ivaschenko at an altitude of 2200 m accelerated the plane to a speed above 1100 km / h, reaching the speed of sound. Then the new car demonstrated this speed at an altitude exceeding 10 kilometers. It was a major success in the "arms race", the race for the speed and quality of the latest combat aircraft.
However, such successes had to be paid with their lives, as in a real battle. The fact is that when the speed of sound is reached, the so-called "wave crisis" occurs - a change in the nature of the air flow around the aircraft, which leads to the appearance of previously unknown vibrations and other effects on the body, wings and empennage of the aircraft.
At that time, these features of the "wave crisis" at the speed of sound had not yet been studied and thoroughly known. On March 17, 1950, the plane of test pilot Ivashchenko in a steep dive was literally destroyed by the "ripple effect" - the tail unit of the aircraft could not withstand the previously unknown vibrations at new super speeds.
Experimental SI-1 crashed, Ivaschenko died. At the cost of his life, he, a real combat pilot, gained new knowledge that is critical for the "arms race". The future MiG-17 received a different tail unit, a new design from new materials.
Already in 1951, this most modern fighter at that time went into mass production. The plane received at a high price turned out to be very successful, it was in service for almost 20 years, successfully fought against the latest US aircraft in the skies of Korea and Vietnam.
This fighter was produced not only in the USSR, but was also produced under license in China, Poland and Czechoslovakia - in total, over 11 thousand copies of the MiG-17 of all modifications were produced. All in all, this fighter was in service with more than forty states, and in most of these countries it happened to participate in hostilities - in this, the MiG-17 is unique among all combat aircraft in the world.
