robert
2nd February 2004, 10:13
Following the collapse of the Communist state, information about Soviet aircraft that had been previously unavailable in the West started flowing out of the former USSR. It's fair to state that the flow has become a flood, helping to clear up many false assumptions and misconceptions that had been believed about Soviet aircraft. One of those concerns the Focke-Wulf Ta 183, and its influence on one of the classic fighter aircraft, the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15. Many Western books and magazine articles have stressed the similarity of the two designs, giving rise to the implication that the MiG-15 was based on the Ta 183, and was merely a development of the unbuilt German jet fighter. The instruction sheet for the PM model kit of the Ta 183 makes this claim, going so far as to include drawings of both aircraft, and the recent AmTech kit even states so on the box top.
Typical of this train of thought is this paragraph, taken from an otherwise very interesting and informative web site concerning Luftwaffe '46 projects:
"The Soviets found a complete set of plans for the Ta 183 in Berlin at the RLM offices, and began construction of six prototypes in March 1946 by the MIG design bureau. On July 2, 1947, the first Soviet-built Ta 183 took to the air powered by a British Rolls-Royce 'Nene' turbojet. They discovered that the original Ta 183 design needed either automatic leading edge slots or wing boundary layer fences to alleviate low-speed stalling. Also, as a compromise between high-speed and low-speed flying, the horizontal stabilizer was moved approximately one-third down from the top of the vertical tail. The modified Ta 183 first flew on December 30, 1947 and in May 1948 was ordered into production as the MIG 15."
Unfortunately, aside from the correct first flight date of the S-01, the MiG-15 prototype, it's pure fabrication. The author of the web site appears to have taken at face value the unsubstantiated story related in David Myhra's The Horton Brothers and Their All-Wing Aircraft, a book that contains all the typos and inaccuracies typical of Schiffer books, and is written by an author with no background in writing aviation history. His fictional account of the Soviet Ta 183 program is illustrated by a photo of a Ta 183 (in Luftwaffe markings) that's so obviously a model that it's laughable.
I disagree with Myhra's story on several points. First he claims that "The Soviets found a complete set of plans for the Ta 183 in Berlin at the RLM offices"; another, more reliable source, states that detail work on the Ta 183 was never even completed. The thorny detail is his claim that MiG made six copies of the Ta 183, the first one flying on July 2, 1947. Myhra has no independent confirmation of this; there is absolutely no corroborating evidence that this series of airplanes existed. Reputable authors have had comprehensive access to the MiG archives in recent years - we have several very good books, written by experts, about MiG aircraft. None of them mention this phantom airplane. It's impossible to prove a negative, but the absence of this aircraft from Bill Gunston's history of MiG is conclusive to me. Gunston is possibly the world's most respected aviation author. Myhra is not. I know whom I'd trust. If the aircraft actually existed, where is the evidence, except from Germans who weren't there? Myhra makes similar ludicrous claims in his book about the Ta 183, claiming that the English Electric Lightning was developed from an unbuilt project that one of Tank's engineers sketched for the RAE, a patently untrue claim that's even more preposterous. Myhra is simply not a reliable source. He makes false assumptions, and naively repeats claims from German engineers without bothering to check the most easily verifiable facts.
Much more reliable books have appeared over the past few years giving the Soviet side of the story, and several strongly refute the specific claim that the MiG-15 was nothing more than a developed Ta 183. This passage from MiG-15: Design, Development, and Korean War History by Yefim Gordon and Vladimir Rigmant states their case:
"Soviet aircraft have been developed under conditions of super secrecy. For this reason, myths have taken hold concerning the creation of the MiG-15.
Myth number one: the MiG-15 was not a new aircraft but an in-depth modification of the Focke-Wulf Ta 183, developed by Kurt Tank.
Myth number two, which arose as a consequence of the first: Soviet aircraft designers could not do something worthwhile, and the MiG-15 would never have appeared without use of captured German material and 'Captive brains'.
The use of the captured materials in developing advanced technologies was not an unusual practice, and the USSR was not alone in doing this. The United States, Great Britain, and other countries took advantage of German projects after the war."
It's worth noting that the recent rash of Russian-authored books has not been shy about admitting the truth regarding Soviet aircraft that were related to foreign designs. The classic example is the Tupelov Tu-4 bomber, reverse engineered from the B-29, and an aircraft that Stalin wanted to get into service so quickly that he forbade Tupelov engineers from making any improvements to the design! Other Soviet designs based on foreign aircraft included the first Sukhoi Su-9 (not the 1950s production aircraft,) which was based on the Messerschmitt Me 262 (and incurred Stalin's wrath as a result,) and the MiG I-270, which was inspired by the Junkers Ju 248/ Messerschmitt Me 263. German engines were copied and used in early Soviet jets. Two teams of German aircraft designers were also imported by the USSR, where they continued to develop German projects such as the Junkers Ju 287 bomber and DFS 346 research aircraft, with little success. All of these cases are fully documented. But a run of six Ta 183s being made by MiG in 1947? The Ta 183 is conspicuous by its absence in any of the reputable books I've read. I've simply seen no Soviet-related documentation that such aircraft existed.
To start with, neither the Ta 183 or any derivatives is even mentioned in Bill Gunston and Yefim Gordon's MiG Aircraft Since 1937, a comprehensive history of Mikoyan-Gurevich. As for its accuracy, it's not a Schiffer written by a neophyte, it's a Putnam, and it's by Bill Gunston. What more could you possibly want? If it isn't in there, it's a pretty sure bet that it didn't exist. At the time the OKB was supposedly making the Ta 183 copies, they were engaged in several other projects, including the I-270, MiG-9, and the genesis of the "S," which would become the MiG-15. They could hardly have had time to run bootleg copies of an aircraft of which "detail design work was never completed." (German Aircraft of the Second World War, Smith & Kay). As for the supposed first flight date of July 2, 1947, that's remarkably close to the date of the first flight of the first Soviet swept-wing jet, the Lavochkin La-160, which flew on June 24, 1947. I guess the La-160 looks a bit like a Ta 183 if you squint hard enough.
The same lack of evidence holds true for R.A. Belyakov and J. Marmain's MiG: Fifty Years of Secret Aircraft Design, which also covers in detail every aircraft MiG ever built, and again fails to mention the Ta 183 or any derivative.
Other factors work against the Ta 183 theory. One of those is that the MiG-15 was designed around the Rolls-Royce Nene engine, which in one of those idiotic decisions that British Labour governments are so fond of, was given to the USSR in 1946. Would anyone design a fighter based around a new engine using an unbuilt project that used a different engine? The similarities, and there are some, between the two designs are superficial, based primarily on the mid-wing layout and that broad, sweeping vertical fin. But the differences are major. To start with, the horizontal tail surfaces of the MiG-15 are midway up the tail, while the Ta 183 had a T-tail. The main undercarriage of the MiG-15 retracted into the wings while the Ta 183's went into the fuselage. Even the sweep is considerably different. The MiG-15 wing sweep was 35 degrees at quarter-chord; the Ta 183 was swept back 40 degrees (32 degrees in the later Project II.) The tail of the MiG-15 was swept at 56 degrees, the Ta 183 at 60 degrees. The wings of the Ta 183 were flat; the MiG-15 had -2 degrees anhedral. Gordon and Rigmant's book mentioned above goes into detail on why each of the MiG-15's design characteristics was adopted; none had anything to do with the Ta 183.
That the Soviet designers used captured German data, and that their jet fighters would not have been developed as quickly without that info is indisputable, and MiG made as much use of the data as anyone. But so did the engineers at North American, SAAB, and other companies, and no one has accused them of making copies. The SAAB J 29 Tunnan looks as much like a Ta 183 as the MiG-15 does, even more so forward of the wing, and it's known that while designing the J 29, SAAB engineers acquired German data on swept wings via Switzerland. Yet they aren't (and shouldn't be) accused of plagiarism.
Carl-Fredrik Guest's wonderful Under the Red Star: Luftwaffe Aircraft in the Soviet Airforce goes into great detail describing German aircraft projects that were continued post-war in the Soviet Union. Once again, the Ta 183 is not mentioned, except to note that Kurt Tank was "invited" to continue his work in the Soviet Union, with specific mention of Ta 183 project. Fortunately for Tank, he was able to continue his work in the West, where he eventually produced the unsuccessful I.Ae.33 Pulqui II, which certainly owed much to the Ta 183, though Tank did not have the benefit of working with Focke-Wulf colleague Hans Multhopp, who was responsible for much of the original design. Strange how the original designer couldn't make a good aircraft, while the "copy" went on to become one of the most successful fighters ever flown...
Guest has the last word on the subject, though. He notes, "After the return of the German engineers [in the '50s the German engineers from the two design bureaux were allowed to return home - RA] a number of accounts of the work performed in the USSR were published in various Western aviation journals. As many of these articles were - for obvious reasons - published anonymously, appropriate attention was not always paid to the - naturally rather vague - information content, which was considered either 'science-fiction' (in the literal meaning of this phrase) or on the other hand as definitive proof, badly needed by Cold war anti-Soviet propagandists, that the MiG-15 etc. were of German origin!"
Nowadays, we have enough information to know better. While acknowledging that the MiG-15's designers used German research, it's inaccurate and disrespectful to the men of the MiG OKB to suggest that the MiG-15 was anything but a brilliant original design.
Typical of this train of thought is this paragraph, taken from an otherwise very interesting and informative web site concerning Luftwaffe '46 projects:
"The Soviets found a complete set of plans for the Ta 183 in Berlin at the RLM offices, and began construction of six prototypes in March 1946 by the MIG design bureau. On July 2, 1947, the first Soviet-built Ta 183 took to the air powered by a British Rolls-Royce 'Nene' turbojet. They discovered that the original Ta 183 design needed either automatic leading edge slots or wing boundary layer fences to alleviate low-speed stalling. Also, as a compromise between high-speed and low-speed flying, the horizontal stabilizer was moved approximately one-third down from the top of the vertical tail. The modified Ta 183 first flew on December 30, 1947 and in May 1948 was ordered into production as the MIG 15."
Unfortunately, aside from the correct first flight date of the S-01, the MiG-15 prototype, it's pure fabrication. The author of the web site appears to have taken at face value the unsubstantiated story related in David Myhra's The Horton Brothers and Their All-Wing Aircraft, a book that contains all the typos and inaccuracies typical of Schiffer books, and is written by an author with no background in writing aviation history. His fictional account of the Soviet Ta 183 program is illustrated by a photo of a Ta 183 (in Luftwaffe markings) that's so obviously a model that it's laughable.
I disagree with Myhra's story on several points. First he claims that "The Soviets found a complete set of plans for the Ta 183 in Berlin at the RLM offices"; another, more reliable source, states that detail work on the Ta 183 was never even completed. The thorny detail is his claim that MiG made six copies of the Ta 183, the first one flying on July 2, 1947. Myhra has no independent confirmation of this; there is absolutely no corroborating evidence that this series of airplanes existed. Reputable authors have had comprehensive access to the MiG archives in recent years - we have several very good books, written by experts, about MiG aircraft. None of them mention this phantom airplane. It's impossible to prove a negative, but the absence of this aircraft from Bill Gunston's history of MiG is conclusive to me. Gunston is possibly the world's most respected aviation author. Myhra is not. I know whom I'd trust. If the aircraft actually existed, where is the evidence, except from Germans who weren't there? Myhra makes similar ludicrous claims in his book about the Ta 183, claiming that the English Electric Lightning was developed from an unbuilt project that one of Tank's engineers sketched for the RAE, a patently untrue claim that's even more preposterous. Myhra is simply not a reliable source. He makes false assumptions, and naively repeats claims from German engineers without bothering to check the most easily verifiable facts.
Much more reliable books have appeared over the past few years giving the Soviet side of the story, and several strongly refute the specific claim that the MiG-15 was nothing more than a developed Ta 183. This passage from MiG-15: Design, Development, and Korean War History by Yefim Gordon and Vladimir Rigmant states their case:
"Soviet aircraft have been developed under conditions of super secrecy. For this reason, myths have taken hold concerning the creation of the MiG-15.
Myth number one: the MiG-15 was not a new aircraft but an in-depth modification of the Focke-Wulf Ta 183, developed by Kurt Tank.
Myth number two, which arose as a consequence of the first: Soviet aircraft designers could not do something worthwhile, and the MiG-15 would never have appeared without use of captured German material and 'Captive brains'.
The use of the captured materials in developing advanced technologies was not an unusual practice, and the USSR was not alone in doing this. The United States, Great Britain, and other countries took advantage of German projects after the war."
It's worth noting that the recent rash of Russian-authored books has not been shy about admitting the truth regarding Soviet aircraft that were related to foreign designs. The classic example is the Tupelov Tu-4 bomber, reverse engineered from the B-29, and an aircraft that Stalin wanted to get into service so quickly that he forbade Tupelov engineers from making any improvements to the design! Other Soviet designs based on foreign aircraft included the first Sukhoi Su-9 (not the 1950s production aircraft,) which was based on the Messerschmitt Me 262 (and incurred Stalin's wrath as a result,) and the MiG I-270, which was inspired by the Junkers Ju 248/ Messerschmitt Me 263. German engines were copied and used in early Soviet jets. Two teams of German aircraft designers were also imported by the USSR, where they continued to develop German projects such as the Junkers Ju 287 bomber and DFS 346 research aircraft, with little success. All of these cases are fully documented. But a run of six Ta 183s being made by MiG in 1947? The Ta 183 is conspicuous by its absence in any of the reputable books I've read. I've simply seen no Soviet-related documentation that such aircraft existed.
To start with, neither the Ta 183 or any derivatives is even mentioned in Bill Gunston and Yefim Gordon's MiG Aircraft Since 1937, a comprehensive history of Mikoyan-Gurevich. As for its accuracy, it's not a Schiffer written by a neophyte, it's a Putnam, and it's by Bill Gunston. What more could you possibly want? If it isn't in there, it's a pretty sure bet that it didn't exist. At the time the OKB was supposedly making the Ta 183 copies, they were engaged in several other projects, including the I-270, MiG-9, and the genesis of the "S," which would become the MiG-15. They could hardly have had time to run bootleg copies of an aircraft of which "detail design work was never completed." (German Aircraft of the Second World War, Smith & Kay). As for the supposed first flight date of July 2, 1947, that's remarkably close to the date of the first flight of the first Soviet swept-wing jet, the Lavochkin La-160, which flew on June 24, 1947. I guess the La-160 looks a bit like a Ta 183 if you squint hard enough.
The same lack of evidence holds true for R.A. Belyakov and J. Marmain's MiG: Fifty Years of Secret Aircraft Design, which also covers in detail every aircraft MiG ever built, and again fails to mention the Ta 183 or any derivative.
Other factors work against the Ta 183 theory. One of those is that the MiG-15 was designed around the Rolls-Royce Nene engine, which in one of those idiotic decisions that British Labour governments are so fond of, was given to the USSR in 1946. Would anyone design a fighter based around a new engine using an unbuilt project that used a different engine? The similarities, and there are some, between the two designs are superficial, based primarily on the mid-wing layout and that broad, sweeping vertical fin. But the differences are major. To start with, the horizontal tail surfaces of the MiG-15 are midway up the tail, while the Ta 183 had a T-tail. The main undercarriage of the MiG-15 retracted into the wings while the Ta 183's went into the fuselage. Even the sweep is considerably different. The MiG-15 wing sweep was 35 degrees at quarter-chord; the Ta 183 was swept back 40 degrees (32 degrees in the later Project II.) The tail of the MiG-15 was swept at 56 degrees, the Ta 183 at 60 degrees. The wings of the Ta 183 were flat; the MiG-15 had -2 degrees anhedral. Gordon and Rigmant's book mentioned above goes into detail on why each of the MiG-15's design characteristics was adopted; none had anything to do with the Ta 183.
That the Soviet designers used captured German data, and that their jet fighters would not have been developed as quickly without that info is indisputable, and MiG made as much use of the data as anyone. But so did the engineers at North American, SAAB, and other companies, and no one has accused them of making copies. The SAAB J 29 Tunnan looks as much like a Ta 183 as the MiG-15 does, even more so forward of the wing, and it's known that while designing the J 29, SAAB engineers acquired German data on swept wings via Switzerland. Yet they aren't (and shouldn't be) accused of plagiarism.
Carl-Fredrik Guest's wonderful Under the Red Star: Luftwaffe Aircraft in the Soviet Airforce goes into great detail describing German aircraft projects that were continued post-war in the Soviet Union. Once again, the Ta 183 is not mentioned, except to note that Kurt Tank was "invited" to continue his work in the Soviet Union, with specific mention of Ta 183 project. Fortunately for Tank, he was able to continue his work in the West, where he eventually produced the unsuccessful I.Ae.33 Pulqui II, which certainly owed much to the Ta 183, though Tank did not have the benefit of working with Focke-Wulf colleague Hans Multhopp, who was responsible for much of the original design. Strange how the original designer couldn't make a good aircraft, while the "copy" went on to become one of the most successful fighters ever flown...
Guest has the last word on the subject, though. He notes, "After the return of the German engineers [in the '50s the German engineers from the two design bureaux were allowed to return home - RA] a number of accounts of the work performed in the USSR were published in various Western aviation journals. As many of these articles were - for obvious reasons - published anonymously, appropriate attention was not always paid to the - naturally rather vague - information content, which was considered either 'science-fiction' (in the literal meaning of this phrase) or on the other hand as definitive proof, badly needed by Cold war anti-Soviet propagandists, that the MiG-15 etc. were of German origin!"
Nowadays, we have enough information to know better. While acknowledging that the MiG-15's designers used German research, it's inaccurate and disrespectful to the men of the MiG OKB to suggest that the MiG-15 was anything but a brilliant original design.