Aircraft MIG-21 MF German Democratic Republic, 1990

Product description

The Mig-21 was originally built by the Mikoyan and Gurevich Design Bureau in the Soviet Union with a NATO nickname Fishbed. No other jet has had as many planes produced as the Mig-21. Depending on the reference source 3,000 - 8,000 planes of all versions were made in the Soviet Union, under license to allied countries and China without license. At the time of its introduction into the Soviet Air Force service in 1959, it was exactly what they wanted. A small, fast, agile, dependable and most importantly simple making it easy to turn out great numbers of the plane. The skies of Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia and Central America seemed to be filled with thousands of the Mig-21. Because of its relatively low cost since it was heavily subsidized by the Soviets, it became the plane of choice for many third world countries. Taking this into account this
plane has seen more wars then any other modern day jet. The Mig-21 was used in front line service for over 30 years equaling that of the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II. There were 5 generations of the plane in many versions and each generation brought with it great improvements over its predecessors. There are/were some 21 countries that flew the Mig-21.

During the 1980s and 90s Jagdfliegerschwader 3 (JG-3) was based at Preschen, East Germany. JG-3 was equipped with MiG-21UM and MiG-21UBs for training as well as MiG-29 and MiG-21MFs. One of their MiG-21MFs was Red “687” and is now on display at the Deutches Museum Flugwerft in Oberschleissheim. Over time and by the 1990 reunification of East and West Germany JG-3 had received 251 MiG-21s in 7 variants. JG-3 flew the MiG-21MF from 1972 until 1990 when at that time they had 68 MiG-21MFs.