Military jets with a Russian pedigree have really taken off
As a child, I loved my neighbour’s MG sports car as it looked so sleek and fab.
I knew that MG was a British company but, as I grew a little older, I was surprised to hear about Russian MG jets on the nightly news.
Of course, I eventually realised they were not MG jets, but MIG jets.
However, to this day, I don’t know what MIG means.
Can you tell me, Queries Man? – T. As you quite rightly said, MG is a British company, and the initials stand for Morris Garage, a company that began in Oxford in the 1920s.
MIG jets, however, are decidedly Russian.
Migs, any member of a family of Soviet military fighter aircraft produced by a design bureau founded in 1939 by Artem Mikoyan (M) and Mikhail Gurevich (G). The “i” in MIG is the Russian word meaning “and”.
Early Migs were propeller-driven fighters produced in small numbers during the Second World War.
The MIG-9, which first flew in 1946, simply added jet propulsion to a piston-engine airframe.
However, the MIG-15, built with swept-back wings derived from German wartime research and powered by a copy of a Rolls-royce engine, became one of the best of the early jet fighters. The single-seat, single-engine plane was first flown in 1947 and saw extensive combat in the Korean War.
Since then Migs have continued to be at the cutting-edge of aviation design and the latest, the MIG-35, has a top speed of 1,300mph and a range of 1,500 miles.
There was an ad that was shown on TV quite a lot in the ’60s featuring a driver who was terrible at parking. Reginald someone – I can’t remember the surname! – P.
That was Reginald Molehusband. The video has been lost, though there is an updated version featuring a Mr Blunders. Actor Ian Gardiner was paid a oneoff fee of £10 for the role in a film that was shown thousands of times.