- Czechoslovakia: When the Czechoslovak Army was reformed after the 1948 communist Coup d'Etat, the country was supplied with Soviet fighters, mainly MiG and Lavochkin La-7s among some other bombers. They received licenses to manufacture the MiGs locally. They equipped their main fighter squadrons alongside with the locally-built variants.
- Poland: In 1951 the Polish Air and Air Defence Force received some MiG-15, together with a manufacturing license. They equipped the main Polish fighter squadrons and served together the locally produced variants.
The Czechoslovakians produced the MiG-15 under two firms, Rudý Letov, in Prague, which manufactured them from 6th November 1951 until July 1953 when their license was revoked and was passed on to Aero Vodochody, in Odolena Voda, close to Prague too. Between 1951 and July 1953 Letov manufactured 160 Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15s under the designation of Letov S-102.
When Aero overtook overtook the production of the MiG-15 in July 1953, the MiG-15 was already being replaced in the USSR by the MiG-17 which a more refined version of the MiG-15 and they only manufactured it until 1954. However, during that period, they manufactured 661 MiG-15s under the designation of Aero S-102.
As by the mid 1950s there were many outdated MiG-15s in Czechoslovakia, the Czechoslovak government ordered a ground-attack conversion of many MiG-15s to the Letecké opravny Kbely s.p. in the Czechoslovak city of Kbely in 1958. Threfore, this company reinforced the wings of the standard MiG-15 to arm them with either LR-130 rocket launchers (plus external fuel tanks), LR-55 rockets or OFAB-100 bombs. One-hundred and fifty-four of them were converted from 1958 until the early 1960s. They were assigned to ground-support squadrons of the Czechoslovak Air Force during the early 1960s when they were replaced by better ground-attack types.
The Polish license-built MiG-15s were manufactured by Wytwórnia Sprzetu Komunikacyjnego No.1, at the Polish city of Mielec commonly known as WSK-Mielec. They received the manufacturing license in 1951 and kept manufacturing them until 1st September 1954 when they switched production (also under license) toward the MiG-15bis. The Polish-built MiG-15s received the denomination of Lim-1 and 227 of them were manufactured. They served alongside the Polish MiG-15/Lim-2 (the Polish version of the MiG-15bis) in the main fighter squadrons of the Polish Air Force of the early-to-mid 1950s until they were replaced by the MiG-17.
Sources:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-15
2. https://forum.valka.cz/topic/view/53179
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czechoslovak_Air_Force
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Air_Force
5. Salamander Books - The Complete Book of Fighters
No comments:
Post a Comment