In November 1950,
United Nations fighter pilots encountered a soviet built swept wing fighter for
the first time - a MiG-15 bis, and in doing so made the name MiG infamous to all
Western nation countries overnight. While having a dodgey NATO code name
(Faggot!), it fought in the skies over Korea and was well respected by NATO
pilots as a formidable opponent. The design was a culmination of inputs from
captured Italian, Japanese and in particular German aircraft designers from
WWII. The German Focke Wulf TA-183 was a radical 35-degree swept wing design (by
Kurt Tank) and although a flying example was never completed it showed great
promise. The MiG design bureau took this as the basis for their new fighter,
made a few changes and the first one flew in December 1947 powered by a British
Nene Mk1 turbo jet. Full-scale production came online in late 1948 and airworthy
examples still remain today being displayed at airshows across the world.
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This is Tamiya's 1/48 MiG-15 bis
finished in an early 1950's Soviet Airforce scheme. Built out of the box with no
fiddley after market detail sets it was a joy to construct. Initially sprayed
all over gloss silver it looked a little flat and bland. This was when I decided
to mask off individual panels and spray various mixes of silver to differentiate
one panel from another and give the model a more weathered look. (use post-it
notes to mask silver as normal masking tape WILL peel the silver paint off the
model!) Semi-gloss acrylic varnish was then applied before filling the panel
lines with black artist’s oil paint. The decals were rubbish, kept breaking up
- I nearly lost the flashes down both sides of the tail. The persistence paid
off though and the finished model looks cool. Well I think so any way!
