Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15

Updated: October 2026 – A short, almost barrel-shaped fuselage, a round maw with a dividing wall up front, swept-back wings and the horizontal stabilizer high up at the tail: anyone who stands in an aviation museum in front of a MiG-15 is looking at the jet that alarmed Western air forces over Korea in 1950. The MiG-15 was the first Soviet jet fighter built in large numbers, flew with dozens of air forces – including the East German NVA – and is today one of the most sought-after jet warbirds. Here you learn how to recognize it reliably, which variants exist and where you can experience it today in a museum or even in the air.

What is the MiG-15?

The MiG-15 is a single-seat, single-engine fighter from the Soviet design bureau of Artem Mikoyan and Mikhail Gurevich. After the Second World War the Soviet Union urgently needed a modern interceptor fast enough to catch enemy bombers at high altitude. Mikoyan-Gurevich relied on two ingredients for this: wings swept at 35 degrees and a powerful engine. Because domestic jet engines were not yet mature, they turned to a copy of the British Rolls-Royce Nene, which Britain had sold to the Soviet Union in small numbers. In the Soviet Union it ran as the RD-45.

The I-310 prototype took off on December 30, 1947 with test pilot Viktor Yuganov – barely three months after the first flight of the American F-86 Sabre. Series production was approved before testing was complete, the first production aircraft flew on December 31, 1948, and the first MiG-15s reached the regiments in 1949. From early 1950 the improved MiG-15bis followed with the more powerful VK-1 engine.

In the Soviet Union alone around 13,130 examples were built: 1,344 MiG-15s, 8,352 MiG-15bis and 3,434 two-seaters. Large licensed series in Czechoslovakia and Poland and trainers from China came on top. That makes the MiG-15 one of the most-produced jet aircraft of all time.

Recognizing the MiG-15 in the field

The vast majority of MiG-15s you meet stand in a museum hall or on an outdoor display area. That is ideal, because you can walk around the aircraft at your leisure. Three features are enough for a reliable identification.

Another detail gives away the single-seater: the muzzles of the cannons sit on the underside of the forward fuselage. The two-seat MiG-15UTI lacks this heavy armament; instead it has a long, two-part canopy with two seats one behind the other.

Variants at a glance

The MiG-15 family is large, and many museum examples do not come from the Soviet Union at all but from licensed production. The designation on the data plate tells you the origin.

Variant	Feature	Meaning for spotters
MiG-15	First series with RD-45F	Early examples, rare today
MiG-15bis	More powerful VK-1, most-produced version	Most common single-seat version in museums
MiG-15UTI	Two-seater, only lightly armed	Most common airworthy warbird
MiG-15bis R	Reconnaissance aircraft, cameras replace part of the cannons	Rare special version
S-102 / S-103	Czechoslovak licensed build of MiG-15 and MiG-15bis	To be seen at Prague-Kbely and East Fortune, for example
CS-102	Czechoslovak two-seater, 2,012 built	Many airworthy warbirds come from here
Lim-1 / Lim-2	Polish licensed build of MiG-15 and MiG-15bis	Lim-2s stand in Sinsheim, Cosford and Linköping, among other places
SBLim-1 / SBLim-2	Polish two-seater conversions	Fly today with several warbird operators
JJ-2	Chinese two-seater licensed build, exported as FT-2	Rare in Europe

The Czechoslovak factories built 821 S-102s, 620 S-103s and 2,012 CS-102 two-seaters. In Poland 227 Lim-1s and 500 Lim-2s were built. “Lim” stands for Licencyjny Myśliwiec, meaning licensed fighter. For you as a collector this means: a “MiG-15” in a museum can be of Soviet, Czechoslovak or Polish origin – the signs and national insignia help with classification.

The Korean War: the shock in “MiG Alley”

On November 1, 1950, MiG-15s appeared over Korea for the first time, flown by Soviet pilots in Chinese or North Korean markings. The Soviet Union denied its involvement for decades. On the same day the first air combat between jet fighters took place. The American straight-wing jets were inferior to the MiG, and the heavy B-29 Superfortress also suffered heavy losses. The US Air Force eventually moved its daytime B-29 raids to the night.

In response, the USAF sent the F-86 Sabre to Korea in December 1950. Over the northwest of the country, along the border river Yalu, the area emerged that pilots called “MiG Alley”. The MiG-15 climbed better and reached greater altitudes, while the Sabre had the advantage in a dive and at lower altitudes and had a better gunsight. Above about Mach 0.92 the MiG became hard to control, and its pilots were not allowed to exceed this limit.

The kill tally is disputed to this day. The Soviet 64th Fighter Aviation Corps reported over 1,000 kills, the USAF in turn many hundreds of MiGs. Neither figure could be reconciled with the other side’s loss lists. A RAND Corporation study put the Sabre’s ratio at about 1.8:1 overall and only about 1.3:1 against Soviet-flown MiGs.

Operation Moolah and the MiG in Dayton

The USA badly wanted to examine an intact MiG-15 and offered, with Operation Moolah, 100,000 US dollars to a pilot who defects with his aircraft. On September 21, 1953, shortly after the armistice, North Korean Lieutenant No Kum-sok landed his MiG-15bis at Kimpo Air Base near Seoul. He later stated that he had known nothing about the reward beforehand. The aircraft was taken to Okinawa and tested by Chuck Yeager, among others. Today it stands in the National Museum of the US Air Force in Dayton. As early as March 1953, the Polish pilot Franciszek Jarecki had landed with a MiG-15 on the Danish island of Bornholm.

The MiG-15 in East Germany

The first attempt in East Germany ended abruptly. In March 1953, a good 100 dismantled MiG-15s arrived in Cottbus for the 1st Fighter Regiment of the Barracked People’s Police. As early as June 1953 flight training was broken off, and Soviet units flew the aircraft away again. The background was a reassessment of Soviet Germany policy after Stalin’s death. Anyone interested in the location will find plenty on local aviation history in the Cottbus Airfield Museum.

With the founding of the National People’s Army in January 1956, this changed. From autumn 1956 the air wings of the air force received MiG-15s on a scheduled basis. In total at least 177 aircraft came to East Germany, 120 of them MiG-15UTI two-seaters, which shaped training in the early years. Single-seaters of the MiG-15bis version came on top. Later the MiG-17 and then the MiG-21 took over the fighter role, but the MiG-15UTI stayed in service as a trainer for a long time. Use with the air force ended in 1982; a single MiG-15UTI still flew until 1990 as a weather aircraft for the Dresden aircraft works.

That is why the MiG-15 stands today mainly in museums with a connection to East German aviation, such as the Luftwaffe Museum Berlin-Gatow. How the NVA’s Soviet jets differ from Western designs is shown by the overview Recognizing fighter jets in Europe.

Worldwide spread

The MiG-15 flew with over 30 air forces, mainly in the Warsaw Pact, in China, North Korea, the Middle East and Africa. Egypt used the MiG-15bis in the Suez Crisis in 1956. Finland used MiG-15UTI two-seaters. The type also played a role in Cold War incidents: in 1952 a Soviet MiG-15 shot down a Swedish reconnaissance DC-3 over the Baltic Sea; the recovered wreck can be seen today in the Flygvapenmuseum Linköping.

A MiG-15UTI gained sad fame in March 1968: on a training flight, the first human in space, Yuri Gagarin, and his flight instructor were killed. According to the specialist literature, the MiG-15 is still in limited service as a trainer in North Korea – there are hardly any reliable details.

Risk of confusion: MiG-15, Sabre and others

A look back is exciting too: the Messerschmitt Me 262 shows what jet fighters looked like a few years before the MiG-15 – with two engines under slightly swept wings. How you classify vintage aircraft in general is explained in Recognizing vintage aircraft in the sky.

Where you can see the MiG-15 today

In museums the MiG-15 is a frequent guest, above all in Eastern and Central Europe but also in Britain, Scandinavia and the USA. A selection:

Location	What you see	Note
Luftwaffe Museum Berlin-Gatow	MiG-15 as the start of the NVA jet line	Direct comparison with MiG-21 and MiG-29
Flugausstellung Hermeskeil	MiG-15UTI	Outdoor area with many Eastern jets
Technik Museum Sinsheim	Polish Lim-2	Combines well with Speyer
Prague-Kbely Aviation Museum	S-102 in the MiG line	MiG-15 through MiG-23 side by side
Polish Aviation Museum in Krakow	MiG-15, Lim-1 and Lim-2	The “MiG avenue” on the outdoor area
RAF Museum Cosford	Lim-2	Next to Eastern and Western Cold War jets
National Museum of Flight East Fortune	S-103	In Scotland
National Museum of the US Air Force	MiG-15bis of No Kum-sok	Probably the most famous individual aircraft

More examples stand in the Flygvapenmuseum at Malmen airfield, in the Fleet Air Arm Museum Yeovilton and in the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum, where the MiG-15 is displayed together with its opponent, the F-86. You will find practical visiting tips for Gatow at the spot Luftwaffe Museum at Berlin-Gatow airfield, and for Krakow at the spot Muzeum Lotnictwa Polskiego.

Airworthy MiG-15 warbirds

Hardly any jet from the 1950s still flies as often as the MiG-15. The reason: the Eastern Bloc air forces had thousands of two-seaters in inventory, and after 1990 many of them reached the civilian market. According to the US aviation authority FAA, around 43 MiG-15s were privately registered in the USA in 2011; individual examples also fly in Australia and Canada.

In Europe there are few. In Norway a Polish SBLim-2 two-seater flies in “Red 18” colors, in Poland an SBLim-2 is offered for passenger flights, and in the Czech Republic a two-seater was returned to airworthy condition in Hradec Králové in 2014. When and where these aircraft appear, you find in the air shows’ current programs. Air shows in Europe for plane spotters gives an overview of worthwhile events; for the British warbird scene, take a look at the air shows in Duxford.

Photo tips for the MiG-15

Small, silver jets in tight halls or fast warbirds in the display sky – both situations have their own pitfalls.

How to get fast jets sharp at air shows is shown in Photographing air shows. If you want to work on museum aircraft yourself, you will find ideas under Volunteering at aviation museums.

Conclusion

The MiG-15 marks the moment the Soviet Union caught up with the West in the jet age – with swept wings, a copied British engine and an armament intended for bombers. Over Korea it fought the first big duel of two jet fighters with the Sabre, and in East Germany it stood at the start of NVA jet history. Today it can be found in many museums across Europe and, as a two-seater, is among the most common flying jet warbirds.