mig 3 discussion topics and researches

8/13/2019 MIG 3 Discussion Topics and Researches

1/21

The lenght of early and late MiG-3sa research ofAlexey Matvienko

translation byAlexander RuchkovskyUpdated on July 20, 2003

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The MiG-3 information had been scarce, represented only by scale drawings in the Modelist Konstruktor magazine and data from V.Shavrovs legendary History of Soviet aircraft construction, before a sensational Soviet Fighters of Great Patriotic War: MiG-3,LaGG-3, La-5 album was published in 1986 by DOSAAF publishers, which was a real gift for Soviet aviation fans.

This album by V. Voronin and P. Kolesnikov had superb drawingsas well as color profiles by M. Petrovsky and historic photos.It should be noted that the quality level of the drawings was absolutely unique.The book has been answering all questions on design of the production MiG-3 airframes, however, in light of newer publications on thisplane, a few arguable points in the drawingshave appeared that seemed immaculate before.Specific attention was drawn to the early and late MiG fuselage lengthissue.

All published sources unanimously quote to 8250 mm the length of the MiG-3 plane, which overtly conflicts with V. Voronins drawingswhere the late MiG is shown noticeably longer than the early one. The album suggests the drawings are in the 1/50 scale and the scale strip basically coincides with the announced scale.I verified the real scale of the drawing and saw the wingspan was adequate (10200 mm in scale), the length of the early MiG is shown as

8250mm and the length of the late one of 8350mm.Even more curious is the fact that you actua lly find a LENGTHENED MIG-3 (1941) item in the MiG development picture in the albumstext, apparently targeting the late production MiG.

Studies of published stuff and discussions with fellow modellers did not add any considerable clarity, however, an interesting assumptionemerged: what if early MiG-3s were as short as MiG-1s, i.e. 8150mm rather than 8250mm?

Late ones, according to this assumption, were lengthened to the sacral 8250mm . This interesting assumption seemed too dubious tome. MiG was not a piece of cake to fly, an unforgiving plane with over 200kg added in form of an extra tank in rear fuselage should youfail to compensate this weight in the nose, would the plane stay balanced at all?

For other things, Soviet air industry has seen lots of unbelievable things happen, so why not again with the MiG? At any rate, this assumptionwould render Voronins drawings good for nothing or would at least necessitate their major corrections because of no span/l engthcorrelation.

Another opinion insisted on the common length for both early and late production MiG-3 but which one of the Voronin's profilesshould we believe to be correct?
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2/21

In assessment of these opinions, it was important to find out if those drawings could be used to build a model. No problem if the drawing isjust out of scale unlessit presents distorted proportions. I actually suspected the latter and decided to forget, for the time being, about any

announced and published lengths because of no firm knowledge which of those is the correct one.Rather, my task was to use photos to compare proportions of real planes and Voronins drawings.Having no suitable top or bottom views, I restricted myself to analyzing profile photographs. I selected two sets of photos of early and lateMiG-3s, three suitable pictures in each. Preference was given to pictures taken from a distance as their line distortions are smaller. Zoompercentage for each shot to match the drawings length was calculated.

This done, I measured fuselage distances on the photos, applied the zoom rate and marked the corresponding distance on the drawings to seehow close the match is. To illustrate the results, I have superimposed the drawings on the photos .

Comparison of the photo of early MiG to Voronins short MiGdrawing revealed serious distortions of proportions:

you see either a too short nose/too long tail...

... or you see the canopy/wing/radiator sit too much ahead on the drawing.

Here and further on, color lines on my pictures mark noticeable fuselage panel lines. The sliding canopy on the photo is a bit moved back, thishas been considered.
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3/21

What about a long MiG?

Well, its side drawing is amazingly proportional to the photos of late MiGs, all fuselage

distances coincided very well!

Moreover, results were the same when the long drawing was imposed on early (short) MiG

photos.

In other words, the late MiG drawing performed very well both with early and late MiG-3 photos, which allows to assume SAME

LENGTH for both early and late MiG-3s.

The question what this length was remained open, however.

To check it from the other end, I compared the short MiG drawing with the I-200 profile photo.

It showed that the short MiG drawing is very proportional to the photo of the I-200/MiG-1 that

was 8150mm long, as we know.

This allows us to conclude that the scale of Voronins profile drawings is 1/49.4 rather than 1/50.Assuming the early and late MiGs should have had a common length of 8250mm, the profile drawing of the early MiG-3 in the album istoo short.
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4/21

To illustrate this, I put the early MiG drawing onto the photo.

It is easy to see where the drawing and the photo do not match.

In reality, an early MiG-3 differed from a late one only by location of the separation line

between the engine cowling and the cowling of the compartment behind the engine.

On the basis of this, an act of plastic surgery was applied to the drawings.
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5/21

This shows the original condition of the drawing

this shows the result. Here we go!
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6/21

To check myself, I imposed the corrected drawing onto the photo. Quite a match!

Suggested conclusions:

1) Early and late production MiG-3s had the same length, 8250 mm, and differed by the location of separation line between the enginecowling and the cowling behind the engine, as well as by some other minor elements.

2) To correct Voronins profile drawings, we have to consider its scale to be 1/49.4 rather than 1/50, to lengthen the profile drawing ofthe early version, and to zoom the wingspan into the new scale. This done, we can hope to make a model that would be proportionally closeto the original.

I am in hope that the new MiG-3 book announced to be published soon will shed more light on the history of this outstanding aircraft.

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7/21

How red were the red wings of Red 02?Latest update on December 30, 2004 file name: howred.html

Back to MiG-3 Main Back to MiG-3 red 02

The problem

This famous photo was taken on March 7, 1942, when the 120th IAP of Moscow Air Defence was was made Guards as the 12th Gv.IAP.

This aircraft was often interpreted as having

attractive red wing outer panels; we see it drawn in

such a way on:

many old Russian sources; the profiles of John Weal on Air

International;

the monograph Tipy Broni; all existing instructions of kits and decals

sheets;

the old version ofmy profile red 02.

Someone shows it with these characteristics :

red spinner and even red blades; black digits; white wings undersurfaces; silver engine cowling.

Some reasons to think that the wings are red can be resumed here:

they were drawn as red on an old Soviet publication; they resembled to red identification bands used during the '50s on USAF aircrafts operating in arctic areas;
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8/21

the Soviets loved red, particularly during a ceremony; the wings appear to have the same shade of grey than the stars on the fuselage sides.

Recently, many sources have hypothized that wings were green; the reasons are resumed here:

Germans had the air superiority during winter 1941/42, and it was too dangerous to fly, or even to stay on the ground, with red wings; the aircraft is of late type, while the wings without slats were of early type, so they have to be a replacement from another aircraft.

Between the others, this opinion is sustained by the authors of Black Cross-Red Stars, C.Bergstrom and A. Mikhailov, that have published aprofile with green wings, and by the Soviet veteran pilot V.V. Rybalko of 122 IAP, interviewed

athttp://www.iremember.ru/pilots/rybalko/rybalko_r.htm(in Russian language) and athttp://www.sovietwarplanes.com/Rybalko.htm (Englishtranslation).Their opinion is likely, in consideration of the fact that both 12 GvIAP and 122 IAP were on the same airport of Vnukovo, near Moscow, inMarch 1943, so he could have seen this aircraft. But he hasn't explicitely claimed to have seen it.

So, the arguments seen are not definitive. So I have tried another way to obtain informations.

This interesting post appeared on the forum Ezboard 121 "all about warfare", now suppressed.

Re: Jerry's Mig-3

sorry for messing in.

i read Alexandr's post in FIDONET, RU.AVIATION.

he says that having contacted veterans of 12GvIAP of Moscow PVO, he knew out that 02 returned from the combat with wings badly damaged.

service decided to quickly replace entire consoles from Army storage. consoles were summer GREEN instead of winter white.

regiment was engaged in intensive battles, so they had not enough time to paint consoles into white colour. and, frankly said, they had no white paint by that

time.

therefore this plane carried duties with mixed winter-summer colour.
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9/21

moreover, there were planes with only left or only right console replaced such way. but you cannot see them on this specific photo.

years after, some soviet designer with the task of drawing color profiles, being too lazy to see veterans, used his own fantasy to interpred Guardian Regimen's

wings as heroically red.

his personal legend has a luck to be widespread.

Edited by:exec228 at: 9/20/03 10:24 pm

Unfortunately, all our attempts to contact this Alexandr, author of the original post, gave not results.

A similar report was made by Christer Bergstrom, author of Black Cross-Red Stars, that confirmed:

...We got confirmation from veterans some years ago that the outer wing panel of this MiG-3 was green. Simply because the original outer wing panels wereexchanged for outer wing slots from another, probably scrapped, MiG-3, which had not yet received white winter camouflage.....

This reports made me nearly sure that the wings were green. But I am a bit unsatisfied: I would like to find the names of veterans, and be surethat they were really there and saw this aircraft. Waiting for such a confirmation, I have tried to obtain it by an analysis of the only photo

known.

Comparing shades on photos

The following considerations resume the arguments I have exposed on the Ezboard forum about ww2 aircrafts, now unfortunately out of line.There are many printed versions of this photo. I have excluded all those that were roughly retouched, or that show red, green and black as

undistinguishable.The better scan looks this one, scanned (if I don't miss) from an old issue of Aerei, or from MiG OKB of Piotr Butowski and Jay Miller.

One could try by comparing the shades of grey on the wing and on the fuselage side. The K darkness value given by Photoshop on suchsurfaces is nearly identical.
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10/21

But this approach is too superficial, because:

the star lies on a vertical surface, while the wing surface is nearly horizontal; in general, this causes a different lightening; in this case itlooks that the sun direction causes not too different lightening on stars and wing, however we can't guarantee it is identical;

the paint on the wing is highly gloss, and this causes strong reflexes. The surface is so gloss that we can vaguely distinguish even thereflex of white mid fuselage, of the black panel line, of the darker shade of white of the nose, of the shadows of details on the nose andof the sky (darker than the fuselage). On the rear part of wing, a soft light part is due to the light reflexed by the fuselage side. The mostof the wing surface is dominated by strong reflexes, so we can't obtain reliable chips.

So, the apparent identity of the color of the star to that of the wing is not a proof that they were painted with the same color; inconsideration that the wing surface appears lightened by reflexes, this could be a proof that the wing is painted with a darker color thanthe star.

I made a comparison of the colors of the wing. To compare surfaces, they have to be lightened in the same way, that is to say parallel. Acomparison of the wing uppersurface color with the star color would give about the same darkness, but it is without meaning because the


11/21

wing uppersurface receives more light, it is gloss and has strong reflexes.

Only a small surface of the wing is vertical and

parallel to the aircraft side: it is immediately behind

the light on the wingtip.

I compared its darkness with the star on thefuselage, obviously red, and with the green band on

the side of the third aircraft.

As a result, it fits far better with this latter green

one.

If one takes a chip on a slightly higher position onthe fuselage sides of the third aircraft, the match

could be even better. This could be justified because

the triangle, being on the curved surface of wingtip,

is partially bended upward.

Someone critized this test because:

the dark triangle on the wingtip is very small; a gloss surface without reflexes could appear darker than a semigloss surface without reflexes.

So I made a second test, comparing the wing uppersurface with a parallel green surface over the nose of the third aircraft.


12/21

The comparison is a bit altered because the wing is

gloss and the fuselage of the other aircraft is

semigloss. So I took two chips on the wing, one

reflecting the fuselage/sky, and one darker reflectingsome darker parts of the nose.

The chip on the fuselage avoids both the sun direct

reflexion and the gun barrel reflexions, that appear

as two lighter stripes.

As expected,the reflexion of the semigloss green

fuselage surface is intermediate between the

highly reflecting chip and the lowly reflecting

chip on the wing.

This is another argument in favour of green

painted wings. Red parallel surfaces are not

available on the photos, but it's likely they should

appear lighter.

Of course, the wing could be painted with any dark color, but if I have to choose between the red of the stars and the green of the

camo, the latter is an obliged choice.

Other considerations on red 02

The wings outer panels could have been a replacement from another aircraft. It is likely that red 02 had white wings before this date.

In fact, we see that the wings were of early type without slats, while the fuselage is of late type.Hybrids were not impossible during MiG-3 production, but I think it is likely that original wings (white and with slats) were replaced withspare wings; both wings had to be replaced to avoid asimmetry due to slats absence, even if the damage could have been limited to a wing

only.On many old color profiles, the cowling was interpreted as aluminium, but the photo doesnt show any metal light reflection o n red 02, incomparison with the other aircraft of the same photo, black 12, that appears to be partially silver.


13/21

Some old profiles report white wing undersurfaces

on red 02, but there is not any reason to trust this.

Many photos of aircrafts on snowed surfaces show a

strong reflex on the wing undersurfaces that makes

them seem as white.

On the same photos, the red stars under the wings

appear lightened by the reflex too.

Some photos of overall white painted aircrafts doexist, but they are distinguishable from aircrafts

with light blue undersurfaces because of:

the absence of the white-blue demarcationline on the fuselage;

the different shade of main undercarriagedoors.

The appearence of wing undersurfaces on such

photos is indifferent, because they appear always as

white, even on camouflaged aircrafts that havesurely light blue undersurfaces.

Black number 02 and red spinner, appearing on many old profiles, are surely wrong, and are probably due to that they were

based on poor versions of this photo, where black, green and red are undistinguishable.

On the whole, I think that the interpretation of this aircraft given by this profile is reasonably sure.

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14/21

Striped 27: tiger or camaleon?Modified on March 30, 2004 file name: striped27camo.html

Back to MiG-3 Main

Some amazing MiG-3s white 27 appear in a lot of profiles, of decals sheets, of model photo galleries and of flight simulation skins.

All these painting appear to refer to the same aircraft, interpretated in a great number of ways; the most spectacular of them show a sort of"tiger" with sand and green bands and vertical black stripes.

The forerunner of all these artworks seems to be a profile made by John Weal and

published on Air International. It shows a brown-green camo of unusual shape,

with crude black stripes made by hand brush.

As you see, its comment says that it was an aircraft of 7 IAP, Leningrad June

1941.

At first, I was able to obtain a scan of the photo of

this aircraft from an old Air International.

Its caption says that this aircraft is of 7th IAP, 1942,

near Leningrad.
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15/21

Here is a highlighted version to try to see the

blotches in darker areas.

The camo appears to be composed by four shades,including a light one that I had interpreted as sand or

light grey.No stars are visible on the usual tail or fuselage

position; a blotch with a vague star shape looks

visible on the rudder.

On this base, I drew the profile below.


16/21

In the latest years, a lot of publications have been

released about this previously neglected aircraft.This scan, of neatly better quality than the previous

one, was obtained from

Mikoyan's piston-engined fightersof Yefim Gordon

and Keith Dexter, Red Stars vol.13.

Another version of the same image was publishedonIstrebitel MiG-3of Medvedv, Kazanov and

Maslov.

At a first glance, one sees that the 27 is too dark to

be white, and gives the impression of yellow.

Besides, there is not yet trace of the shadow that had

given the impression of a small red star on therudder.

So I felt that my previous profile had to be deeply

fixed.


17/21

This has become urgent after having seen the profile drawn by Adam Batkiewicz

ofDataDecalsfor his decals sheet.

This profile is obtained by an independant interpretation work, and opens obvious problems:

is it possible to interpretate the camo as due to two shades instead than three or four?

Is there really a star on its tail?At first, I've accepted the yellow number as sure.

I decided to proceed by colorizing a photo.

Don't look to the scarce realism, this work was done

only for research, not with any aesthetic ambition.

I've tried to interpretate colors as AII green and AII

dark green, while some black spots are obvious onboth the new photos.

Besides, the black spots are about as shown on the

drawing of John Weal, so they were visible on the

copy he has used too.

A red star is vaguely visible at the center of the tail,

but it looks to be partly covered by black, and

perhaps even by dark green stripes.

A point is still unconvincing. If the number is

yellow, some stripes on the back are only slightly

darker than it, so they can hardly be AII green, but

they could be light grey or sand.This opens another problem: which light stripes are

green, and which are grey on the other parts of the

aircraft?
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18/21


19/21

The comparison was repeated with the scan fromIstrebitel MiG-3.Here the star appears to have an irregular dark outline on a good part of his contour.

This is not visible on the previous scan; it is not clear if this depends on a black outline of the

star, or it is some artifact.

The comparison between darkness of different spots gives more or less the same results than the

previous examination.

The numeric values of darkness of different points can't be compared between different scans,but when the comparison is done within pixels of the same scan, it gives the same conclusions

than before.Strangely, the darkness obtained for AII green on the tail is slightly lower than this of the red

star, despite this gives the impression to be lighter. This can be due to photo grain, and is within

the tolerance of the employed method.


20/21

This image was colorized again to show the

conclusions: red number, and green/dark

green/black camouflage.

The greater evidence of the red 27 in comparison tothe poor evidence of the tail star can be justified:

the 27 is entirely surrounded by dark greenand black spots, creating stronger contrastthan the star, partially surrounded by the

lighter AII green;

the 27 is painted over the alreadycamouflaged aircraft, while the red star was

previous, and was partially overpainted with

black stripes that break its shape;

the upper part of 27 is in good light, and thisputs into evidence the lower part too, as its

prosecution.

This is the new profile that I have drawn

from the image above.

Click on the profile for more comments

about this aircraft.

Clearly, I can't claim to have demonstrated this interpretation, but I think that it is more coherent than all the other ones that I have taken inconsideration.
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21/21

Overall, I consider this conclusion with some regret: I liked very much my four-shaded previous profile and its small red star.

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