MiG-17F - Egypt - 1973
Коментарі
Bernhard PetheEine gute Recherche, ist schon der halbe Weg zum Erfolg. Ich schau da mal weiter zu.
CuajeteMarius, 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)
MariusThank 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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ClementVert interesting project and it's always nice to see a build move from the shelf of doom back to the workbench 🙂
Bernhard PetheEines meiner Lieblingsflieger, schön gebaut, interessante Bemalung. 🙂
MariusThank you for Alek and Ekki!! Hopefully this project will inspire other people tol.
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).
![1:72 Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-17F 'Fresco' [Shenyang J-5] (Airfix A03091)](/products/img/9/4/3/1189943-13641-66-t180.jpg)
