MiG-17F - Egypt - 1973

1
January 7, 2023
The famous Nile camouflage was widely applied on the majority of the Egyptian MiG-17s after 1967-1968. Despite the common wrong assumption, no EAF aircraft of Soviet design had any camouflage painting during the Six Day War (1967). Paint was nevertheless applied immediately after.

The colours of the Nile camouflage are mostly known, wheareas they presented some small variations. An exception to this was the green paint.
The green colour had several different shades and was definitely not the same on all aircraft. There was a grey-green, a dark green or a blue-green (as seen above).

This specific photograph was taken in 1975, with the shown MiG-17 freshly returned from overhaul either from Czechoslovakia or the DDR. This specific machine was previously deployed with an EAF unit in Syria and has participated from there in the October 1973 War.
2
January 7, 2023
The Nile camouflage was applied using available car paints while using no varnish at all, at least during the first years (1968-1970).
This resulted in heavy general chipping of paint, also seen on the similarly painted EAF MiG-21s, Su-7s and Su-20s. This issue was nevertheless partially corrected until the October War, with most aircraft being repainted a second time by 1973.

Note the obvious KK-2 ejection seat. Also note here the special bomb rack under the fuselage (wing root), typical to the EAF and later retrofitted by Egyptian technicians also to Syrian MiG-17s before the October 1973 War.
(see MiG-17F - Syria - 1973 | Album by Redicus (1:72))
3
January 7, 2023
Above, an interesting photograph of a row of Egyptian MiG-17s taken at some point in 1971 or 1972 during an inspection of high ranking EAF officers, therefore before the October War (1973)
Not two machines had the same camouflage pattern. The aircraft in the foreground of the bottom picture (number 2782) is the subject of choice for this project.

These photographs are included in "Arab MiGs Volume 5" by Tom Cooper and David Nicolle, but can be also found online in this short review:
reviews.ipmsusa.org/..ober-1973-war-part-1
4
January 8, 2023
The KK-1 ejection seat as resin part from Pavla compared to what is found in the Airfix MiG-17 kit. The KK-1 seat was used on the MiG-15 and only very early MiG-17s had this seat installed.
5
January 8, 2023
The correct seat for the time frame of this project is definitely the KK-2 seat.

Also, a closer look at the historical photographs of the Vietnamese MiG-17F number 3020 (included in the Airfix kit) reveals as well the obvious KK-2 ejection seat, rendering the seat from Airfix useless.
6
January 8, 2023
I used the PE interior from Eduard again. Except for the instrument panel and the parts for the canopy, the rest of the PE interior from Eduard is a bit dissapointing.
7
January 8, 2023
Eduard didn't bother much with the research for the side consoles/walls in the cockpit regarding their PE interior set, but I can live with the current result.

The fit at the wing junctions was kind of bad, but I've seen much worse.
8
October 15, 2024
Since it's not yet 2 years since the project started, I thought it's time to finish this one as well.
This is the second try at this project with a second kit, since the paint job from the first model looked bad, so it ended in the trash about one year ago.

Dark green and happy masking first. Unfortunately, photographs of the real aircraft exist only from the left side (in flight direction), therefore I had to be creative for the right side.
9
October 15, 2024
And the rest of the colors applied around, based on the closest guess with respect to the few color pictures available (from 1973, not from the later overhauled machines in 1980, etc.).
10
October 15, 2024
Removing the masks revelead small flaws also this time. The edges of where masks used to be acumulaed some (expected) paint between the colors.
11
October 15, 2024
Excess paint at mask edges is fixed later by some gentle sanding or with a toothpick.
The tootpick can work well with the non-acrylic paints during the first minutes/hours after paint application, while the paint still has some elasticity. Once the paint becomes 100% matured, you will only crack it and remove cracked chunks, destroying the paint layer.

I also used this technique to fix some of those not so smooth edges. Cutting masks to be perfectly round with smooth edges is not very straight forward for this camouflage. Using curved masking tape will not work well due to the required high curvature of the green stripes, whereas their width shouldn't be constant either.
12
October 15, 2024
The Airfix kit didn't put that much effort in the representation of some of the landing gear doors.
I opted again for a PE replacement, this time from PART.

Although raised rivet heads are absurd in 1:72 for such lowly loaded secondary structures, I prefered these PE parts for their overall effect/impression instead of the flat and thick plastic parts of the kit.
13
October 15, 2024
The landing flaps will be displayed in the opened position, this time as a left over from a previous PE-set from Eduard
14
October 15, 2024
Doors and flaps painted, awaiting weathering.
15
October 22, 2024
Tanks also painted, guns added, model sealed and decals added. Ready for weathering.
16
October 22, 2024
Small cables still to be added to the landing gear bay, but overall ready for weathering here as well.

Comentarii

37 7 January 2023, 17:19

Bernhard Pethe
Eine gute Recherche, ist schon der halbe Weg zum Erfolg. Ich schau da mal weiter zu.

8 January 2023, 11:25

Sylvain Vernier
a new well documented article 👀

8 January 2023, 17:16

Cuajete
Nice start. Following! 👍

8 January 2023, 18:23

Raphael Bernecole
Very Nice 🙂

15 October, 11:43

Cuajete
Marius, I'm glad you're taking up this interesting project again.
Very nice color scheme! It's the same scheme that this Mig-15 UTI? Egyptian Warriors (Condor Decals 72014, 1:72)

15 October, 18:07

Nicolas
Following

15 October, 19:53

Łukasz Gliński
Very nice camo sir 👍

16 October, 08:10

Alec K
Excellent! Taking a belated seat.

16 October, 12:51

Marius
Thank you for the interest mates!

@Cuajete: in a way it's similar, but not two EAF machines of the same type had the same "Nile" camouflage pattern. This was left to the freedom of artistic expresion of the maintainance workers. The rule was to use those three main colors: sand (sometimes orange sand), the weird green and a very dark green-tan (close to a complete black). The darkest color is certainly not the proposed brown of that decal sheet.

Otherwise, some of the EAF MiGs were overhauled in Warsaw Pact countries and were locally painted with only similar paints. The MiG-17 from the first picture of this album is such an example, where they applied directly black for the darkest color.

Sometimes order of colors was switched, while sometimes the applied pattern was completely irregular:

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This one below is some restored/repainted piece of museum in the US, where the darkest color is wrongly applied as brown:

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[img2]&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=f2c03e278217218231df3c016c4db0b86c351d2f4dd899a6

16 October, 19:44

Villiers de Vos
Fantastic paint work.

16 October, 20:04

Clement
Vert interesting project and it's always nice to see a build move from the shelf of doom back to the workbench 🙂

17 October, 06:41

Cuajete
Marius, thank you so much for your interesting information 👍

17 October, 18:40

Guy Rump
Looking great, following. 👍

22 October, 20:14

Cuajete
Great painting job and very nice scheme 👍

23 October, 17:32

Album info

My topic is the Egyptian MiG-17F number 2782 as photographed in 1972 (see album, photograph #3) and likely a participant in the October War (1973)

By the time the Suez Crisis started (1956), Egypt already had converted a small number of pilots to the new MiG-17Fs, which subsequently performed several combat missions during the war.

The Six Day War (1967) brought massive losses to the Egyptian MiG-17 fleet, with a total of 44 MiG-17Fs and PFs being completely written off according to official Egyptian archives. Nevertheless, the MiG-17s were still very active during the Six Day War with a total of 49 combat sorties (see link: MiG-17PF - Egypt - 1967 | Album by Redicus (1:72)). While all Soviet-made aircraft operated by the EAF during the Six Day War (June 1967) had no camouflage painting at all, all of these received camouflage painting immediately after.

One of the famous EAF camouflage patterns was the "Nile Camouflage" briefly described in one previous project (see link: MiG-21MF - Egypt - Nile Camouflage - 1973 | Album by Redicus (1:72)). While there were also a few exceptions, the vast majority of Egyptian MiG-17s have had the Nile Camouflage by 1973.

As the October 1973 War commenced, the MiG-17s together with the Su-7s and Su-20s were the main ground attack aircraft of the EAF, with the MiG-17s being vastly more numerous. While it is certain that Egypt (UARAF) had no longer any MiG-19s in service after 1970, the number of available MiG-17s is very difficult to estimate. An indirect estimate converges to approximately 100 machines operational by October 1973 (according to "Arab MiGs", Volume 5, by T. Cooper, D. Nicolle).

Egypt never disclossed even after 50 years the precise number of EAF losses during the October War. President Anwar Sadat once explained several years after that the EAF had lost 120 aircraft during the war, while US and Israeli sources are counting between 230 and 250 losses for the Egyptian, Algerian and Iraqi air forces together. Considering that exact losses are known for the latter countries, where Algeria lost 2 aircraft and Iraq 15, one can conclude that the EAF lost over 220 aircraft according to these sources. A large majority of the EAF losses was comprised of MiG-17s and MiG-21s. Considering this and the individual recollections and stories from Egyptian pilots (as for instance in "Arab MiGs, Volume 5" and "..., Volume 6") it is therefore quite likely that the Egyptian MiG-17 fleet was signifficantly diminished after October 1973.

After the October War, Egypt received close to no replacements from the USSR for its very high aircraft losses. The complex nature of events and consequences of the war have left Egypt in front of ever colder ties with the USSR and more in dialog with Israel and the USA. Once the Camp David peace deal with Israel was achieved (1979), Egypt had already reoriented itself geopolitically. The surviving MiG-17s were retired from EAF service in 1982 and slowly replaced in their ground attack role by F-4E Phantoms (received from the US as a reward for the peace treaty).

MiG-17F - Egypt - 1973

16 imagini

1:72

In progres

1:72 Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-17F 'Fresco' [Shenyang J-5] (Airfix A03091)

1:72 MiG-17 Fresco - Wheels (Eduard 672228)

1:72 MiG-17A/P/F (Fresco A, B, C) - 37mm and 23mm gun barrels set & Pitot Tube (Master AM-72-071)

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