How it was made:

Russia said to the UK, “Can we have your jet engine?” Now, after World War II, England was broke. And they needed money. So, and they also wanted to keep Russia happy. So they said, “Yeah, we’ll sell you 25 of our jet engines.” Figuring they wouldn’t be able to make copies. Well, Russia made copies. Once they got the Rolls-Royce jet engine, they made a copy of it. The MiG-15 made its maiden flight in December 30th, 1947. The first production aircraft flew exactly one year later. It was in the frozen skies of Korea that the MiG-15 proved one of the most horrible fighters of its generation. On November 8th of 1950, MiGs tangled with United States Air Force F-80Cs, Lieutenant Russell Brown downed one of the Communist fighters in the history’s first jet-to-jet dog flight. Despite this initial success, the performance of the swept-wing MiG was far superior to that of the straight-wing aircraft like the F-80 and the Navy’s F-9F Panther. Because of that, the fourth fighter wing in the United States with its F-86A Sabers were rushed to the far east to clash with the MiGs in the first time of December. For the next two and a half years, Sabers and MiGs, frequently flown by Russian and other Eastern Bloc pilots, doled in the skies over the Yahoo River in the area called MiG Alley. At the end of the Korean War, Sabers pilots claimed a kill ratio over their opponents of 7 to 1. This lopsided total, usually attributed to the superior training given to United States Air Force pilots. The West got his first close-up look at a MiG-15 in September of 1953 when a North Korean pilot defected. MiG-15 served with virtually every Air Force in the Communist Bloc, including those of the Soviet client states in Latin America, Africa, and in the Middle East. Some soldiered on into the 1970s. Over 17,000 aircraft were built in Russia, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. Thousands more were built in China. The museum aircraft is an early model MiG BIS. All parts, including the engine, were manufactured at the State Aircraft Laboratory 1 in Franzie Airfield, Moscow in the Soviet Union in 1951. The parts were shipped to the People’s Republic of China for final assembly at their Xinhai facility. While serving with the People’s Liberation Army Air Force as what they called the J-2, several modifications were made to the aircraft. It may have participated in the Korean conflict and was exported to the United States in the 1980s and acquired by a private family. They generously donated it to the museum. This airplane has flown in a couple different movies. One of the movies you might know of is the movie “Devotion,” and the aircraft was based in a town called Wenatchee, which is up in the state of Washington, where they used the Cascade Mountains as a simulation of Korea during the Korean War. The museum owns three MiG 15s. Two are airworthy, and one is on static display.