MiG-21MF - Egypt - 1973
Egyptian Air Force (EAF) - Ramadan War (1973)

As of the October War of 1973, except for very late deliveries of MiG-21MFs in early 1973, all Egyptian MiG-21s were locally painted at the Helwan factories in the early 1970s. It appears that car paint was used for this. Two different partially standardized camouflage patterns were developed and applied at Helwan:

#1 The camouflage with green or brown stripes on top of a sand colour (see my other Egyptian MiG-21):
MiG-21PFM - Egypt - 1973 | Project by Redicus (1:72)

#2 The famous and unique "Nile Camouflage" composed of three main colours: sand, grey-green (FS505310) and dark green (505056).

The Nile Camouflage was unique for each machine, with not two machines having the same pattern. Commonly, there were relatively thin green stripes separating the dark green from the sand background, but in some cases the colours were reversed, where the stripes were sand or even dark green instead.

My subject is the MiG-21MF number 8444 which is depicted in a colour profile in the "Arab MiGs, Volume 6" of Tom Cooper and David Nicolle. I accidentally managed to find a real photograph of number 8444 on the internet (see first picture in my album).

This machine is a veteran of the October War of 1973 and it is unknown if it actually survived the conflict.

Overall, all MiG-21s painted in the Nile Camouflage (and most likely all other Egyptian MiG-21s) maintained their wartime camouflage patterns until final withdrawal from service in the late 80s.