a research of Alexey Matvienko translation by Alexander Ruchkovsky |
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The MiG-3 information had been scarce, represented only by scale drawings
in the Modelist Konstruktor magazine and data from V. Shavrov’s legendary “History
of Soviet aircraft construction”, before a sensational “Soviet Fighters
of Great Patriotic War: MiG-3, LaGG-3, La-5” album was published in 1986
by DOSAAF publishers, which was a real gift for Soviet aviation fans.
This album by V. Voronin and P. Kolesnikov had superb drawings as well
as color profiles by M. Petrovsky and historic photos.
It should be noted that the quality level of the drawings was absolutely unique.
The book has been answering all questions on design of the production MiG-3
airframes, however, in light of newer publications on this plane, a few arguable
points in the drawings have appeared that seemed immaculate before.
Specific attention was drawn to the early and late MiG fuselage length
issue.
All published sources unanimously quote to 8250 mm the length of the MiG-3
plane, which overtly conflicts with V. Voronin’s drawings where the late
MiG is shown noticeably longer than the early one.
The album suggests the drawings are in the 1/50 scale and the scale strip basically
coincides with the announced scale.
I verified the real scale of the drawing and saw the wingspan was adequate (10200
mm in scale), the length of the early MiG is shown as 8250mm and the length
of the late one of 8350mm.
Even more curious is the fact that you actually find a “LENGTHENED MIG-3 (1941)”
item in the MiG development picture in the album’s text, apparently targeting
the late production MiG.
Studies of published stuff and discussions with fellow modellers did not add
any considerable clarity, however, an interesting assumption emerged: what
if early MiG-3s were as short as MiG-1s, i.e. 8150mm rather than 8250mm?
Late ones, according to this assumption, were lengthened to the “sacral”
8250mm. This interesting assumption seemed too dubious to me. MiG was not
a piece of cake to fly, an unforgiving plane with over 200kg added in form of
an extra tank in rear fuselage… should you fail to compensate this weight in
the nose, would the plane stay balanced at all?
For other things, Soviet air industry has seen lots of unbelievable things happen,
so why not again with the MiG? At any rate, this assumption would render Voronin’s
drawings “good for nothing” or would at least necessitate their major corrections
because of no span/length correlation.
Another opinion insisted on the common length for both early and late production
MiG-3 – but which one of the Voronin's profiles should we believe to be correct?
In assessment of these opinions, it was important to find out if those drawings
could be used to build a model. No problem if the drawing is just out of scale
unless it presents distorted proportions. I actually suspected the latter
and decided to forget, for the time being, about any announced and published
lengths because of no firm knowledge which of those is the correct one.
Rather, my task was to use photos to compare proportions of real planes
and Voronin’s drawings.
Having no suitable top or bottom views, I restricted myself to analyzing
profile photographs. I selected two sets of photos of early and late MiG-3s,
three suitable pictures in each. Preference was given to pictures taken from
a distance as their line distortions are smaller. Zoom percentage for each shot
to match the drawing’s length was calculated.
This done, I measured fuselage distances on the photos, applied the zoom rate
and marked the corresponding distance on the drawings to see how close the match
is. To illustrate the results, I have superimposed the drawings on the photos.
Comparison of the photo of early MiG to Voronin’s short MiG drawing revealed
serious distortions of proportions:
you see either a too short nose/too long tail... | |
... or you see the canopy/wing/radiator sit too much ahead on the drawing. |
Here and further on, color lines on my pictures mark noticeable fuselage panel
lines. The sliding canopy on the photo is a bit moved back, this has been considered.
The question what this length was remained open, however.
On the basis of this, an act of plastic surgery was applied to the drawings.
This shows the original condition of the drawing | |
this shows the result. Here we go! | |
To check myself, I imposed the corrected drawing onto the photo. Quite a match! |
Suggested conclusions:
1) Early and late production MiG-3s had the same length, 8250 mm, and
differed by the location of separation line between the engine cowling and the
cowling behind the engine, as well as by some other minor elements.
2) To correct Voronin’s profile drawings, we have to consider its scale
to be 1/49.4 rather than 1/50, to lengthen the profile drawing of the early
version, and to zoom the wingspan into the new scale. This done, we can
hope to make a model that would be proportionally close to the original.
I am in hope that the new MiG-3 book announced to be published soon will shed
more light on the history of this outstanding aircraft.
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