With a top speed of 560mph it could decide when to fight, even against the most potent piston-engined fighters in service such as the Sea Fury, Twin Mustang, Bearcat and Sea Hornet. But it is interesting to note that four years after the War, what was essentially a Me 262A was still an effective fighter. There is some debate as to whether this small force was active in 1949 (some sources say 1950). Avia had enough parts to build 19 aircraft.
These extremely useful scavenged parts were gifted to the new Czechoslovakian government. On liberation, Soviet forces seized all the German tools, jigs and components for Me 262 production they found in Czechoslovakia. Avia S-92 Turbína ‘ Czech your privilege’ As soon as the superior MiG-15 was on the scene, it soaked up almost all resources available to develop fighter aircraft, starving lesser aircraft like the MiG-9.ġ1. Though several advanced versions were tested, including one fitted with an afterburner capable of 600mph, they were not pursued. Its armament consisted of the hugely destructive Nudelman N-37 37-mm cannon and two Nudelman-Suranov NS-23 23-mm cannon.
Still, it would have been fast enough able to run away from a Sea Fury. Its top speed of 537mph (slower than the I-300) was not great for a jet fighter, inferior to even the Me 262 clone Avia S-92. One of its major issues was the engine flame-outs that occurred when the guns were fired at high altitudes. Despite its many flaws, the I-300 was commissioned as a fighter, and assigned the designation MiG-9. Instead of bailing out, he made a remarkable, and successful, deadstick unpowered landing. He was replaced by the master test pilot Mark Gallai (a kind of Soviet Winkle Brown), who encountered the same pitch-down issue, which snapped one of the tailplanes off and ruptured the main fuel tank. It was a horrible beast to fly, during a flight in 1946 it uncontrollably pitched down, crashed into the ground and killed its test pilot, A.N. The I-300 had been the first Soviet pure jet to fly, a winning coin toss deciding its place in history in favour of the Yak-15 (which flew later on that same day in 1945). Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-9 ‘Unwell Fargo‘ The horrible and extremely ugly MiG-9. The best of 1949 would not have to wait long for a baptism of fire in the unforgiving skies of Korea.ġ2. While the Arab–Israeli War (1948–1949) was little different to World War II in terms of the fighters types, with Spitfires and Bf 109 derivatives, a new age of aerial warfare was about to explode. The jet generation was just too fast to catch… but they were also very thirsty, short-ranged and extremely dangerous to fly.ġ949 is an intriguing transitory period, many of the fighters you may have expected to be included hadn’t actually entered service yet, so no Tunnan, no F-94, no Venom, no Meteor F8, no CF-100, no Sea Hawk, no Saab 21R and, notably, nothing French. Though the ultimate piston-engined fighters were still serving they were now well out of their depth. If you were unlucky enough to still be flying a piston-engined fighter in 1949 you’d better hope your enemy didn’t have jets.