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New Books on the MiG-21

7 March 2025: The end of MiG-21 operations in Europe prompts the author to turn once again to the reflection of this now closed era – and of course of the MiG-21's service worldwide – in the literature. Almost four years have passed since the last overview of the subject, during which the frequency of relevant new publications has decreased further. Nevertheless, 27 new titles have appeared in this comparatively long period. Once again, the British publisher Helion with eight titles and Jakab from the Czech Republic with six made a decisive contribution. It is pleasing that this time there are again three German-language titles among the new publications.

With the first of these titles, the wing chronicle of JG-1 under the title "697, Montur-Start, Überfahrt zu Halifax-Start, Kanal 1", MediaScript of Berlin has remained true to itself in terms of unwieldy titles (although the current one has a clear connection to the subject and is explained at length in the book) as well as the style and layout of its books; nevertheless, the book on the first flying regiment of the East German Air Force surpasses all similar previous works not only in scope but also in quality. Author Armin Schulz has documented the history of the unit in extraordinary detail, extensively supplemented it with illustrations and documents and enriched it with first-hand accounts of numerous participants. In retrospect, the enormous loss of people and material the wing (like the whole East German Air Force) suffered in the course of its existence is frightening, and it is recorded in this chronicle just as meticulously as the wing's successes.

The greatly expanded new edition of the book "Der Flugplatz Neu-Hardenberg Marxwalde Neuhardenberg" unfortunately does not reach this quality. While the introductory part on the pre-war history is still quite entertaining reading, the wing chronicles of TG-44 and JG-8 lack structure and style. While the history of the government flight is presented largely chronologically and in reasonable detail on some 50 pages, the treatise on JG-8 reaches approximately the same length only because individual events, such as the crash of 859 already known from the book "11-80, katapultieren Sie!", are given excessive space. The actual historical development falls by the wayside. A professional layout and editing that eliminated the numerous repetitions in the text would certainly have benefited the overall result.

The publication of the JG-1 chronicle prompts the author to give an overview of the titles dealing with the history of the NVA's MiG-21 wings:

So there is at least one publication on every NVA unit that operated the MiG-21. However, the work listed on JG-8 is rather thin, and the new book on Marxwalde airfield presented above also deals with JG-8 only inadequately, so there is definitely still a need to catch up here.

The third German-language title particularly pleases the author, as it is the new edition of his MiG-21 book, first published in 2012 and since out of print. Around 20 additional and 20 replaced pictures, taken since the first edition appeared, were included, as were numerous updates on the remaining European operator countries. The chapter on the Chinese MiG-21s was considerably revised on the basis of new research. And finally, numerous typing and typesetting errors as well as some factual errors could be corrected. In addition, the publisher provided a new, much more attractive cover layout which, combined with a photo from the Bulgarian-Polish air policing at Graf Ignatievo 2015, also visibly enhances the book.

A rather coincidental country focus of the current overview is Cuba. With "Cuban MiGs", something on the MiG-21 appears from the Harpia publishing house again after a long break. It is probably the first overall account of the history of the Cuban Air Force outside Cuba. The subject can certainly be developed further, but a start has been made. Also on the subject of Cuba, the autobiography "Inside Castro’s Bunker" is a late addition to the author's collection. Its author, Rafael del Pino, is also mentioned in the book "The MiG Diaries", which presents the air war in Angola essentially from the Cuban and partly from the South African point of view. It thus forms the link to another publication on this conflict – "War of Intervention in Angola: Volume 5", the latest part so far of this extraordinarily comprehensive treatment of the subject.

In the eight publications mentioned, Helion & Co. devotes itself to its focus regions, the Middle East and Africa. This time, Vietnam expert István Toperczer concentrates with "MiG-21 FISHBED": Opposing Rolling Thunder 1966 - 68 on the most intensive period of the air war in Southeast Asia. Technical volumes from the Czech Republic and Poland, a booklet for modellers, a travel report from the airshow at Wonsan in 2016 and the English edition of a book previously published in Finnish and Swedish round off the picture.

29 June 2021: More than two years after the last literature overview, it can be seen that the trend of previous years has become established: we owe the gratifying number of 28 new publications largely once again to Helion from Great Britain with 15 (!) and Jakab from the Czech Republic with eight titles, although the latter source is likely to dry up for the time being with the two most recent volumes of the AERO series on the MiG-21 two-seaters, as all MiG-21 variants in Czechoslovak / Czech service have now been covered.

In two Helion titles – "Silver Birds over the Estuary" and "Tito's Underground Air Base" – the focus is entirely or largely on the MiG-21. All others touch on aspects of its use in more or less detail. Particularly interesting among the Helion titles are "The Armed Forces of North Korea" and "Wings over the Hindu Kush", as they deal entirely or partly with the air forces of two countries (North Korea and Afghanistan) on which information has so far been very sparse.

The most remarkable new publication of the current period comes from Russia and is entitled «МиГ»: полёт сквозь время. The opulently designed and illustrated work on the history of the OKB MiG, published for its 80th anniversary, gives today's types considerably more space than the MiG-21, but provides numerous new details on it.

This time there are no titles from or about Germany at all.

Here is the list (with an addition from March 2022):

16 April 2019: The publication of the English edition of his book on the subject prompted the author to present an overview of new MiG-21 publications again after two years. The astonishing number of 40 titles can be reported – 12 with an explicit reference to the MiG-21, the others dealing with aspects of its use worldwide – including three older publications that have only recently enriched the author's collection, and the six booklets from Jakab's AERO series could easily have been combined in one book. Nevertheless, the MiG-21 and its use worldwide continue to be popular on the book market.

Without doubt the most outstanding new publication of the last two years did not appear with one of the usual publishing houses, but was self-published: the book "Thunderstorm - Nuclear carrier MiG-21's in the Warsaw Pact" by Hungarian author Laszlo Becz describes the entire subject of nuclear weapons delivery by the MiG-21 in unprecedented detail. The treatise covers both technical and organisational aspects of this hitherto little-explored subject. Illustrated with extraordinarily detailed drawings and previously unpublished photos, its 100 pages present conclusively for the first time not only the control equipment, carriers and ground equipment needed for nuclear weapons delivery, but – based on interviews with those involved – also the entire processes of handling the nuclear weapons before use.

That the number of new publications is so large is due not least to the work of a number of Czech authors and the publishers Svět Křídel and Jakab, which give them a platform. The author's favourite among the new publications from the neighbouring country is without doubt the volume Šedivky, in which two technicians, Josef Martinek and Stanislav Rogl, deal in detail with the service of the Gorky-built MiG-21MF (also known as MF-75). The grey delivery paint of these aircraft gave the book its title. Another major part of the flood of new titles is due to the British publisher Helion with its @War series and the tireless Tom Cooper. Seven of the titles presented here were written entirely or partly by him.

Four new titles can also be reported from Germany, which, however – with the exception of the treatise on the aircraft engineering service, which has so far remained without a foreign counterpart – have in common that they come nowhere near the level of the foreign publications mentioned.

14 April 2017: Between the last stocktaking of MiG-21 literature and the current edition lie not only 26 months but also a gratifying 17 new books, adding another 30 centimetres to the author's pile of MiG-21-related books. Even if the pace of growth has slowed, the varied treatment of the aircraft and its use in literature continues – interestingly, above all in the countries where the MiG-21 no longer flies or is about to be retired.

This time the Czech Republic is responsible for most of the new publications with five titles. Three more each come from Serbia and Hungary (two of which, however, are devoted to Vietnam and were published in Great Britain and France), two each from Poland and Bulgaria.

It is particularly pleasing for the study of European service history that the works below provide five more new chronicles of MiG-21 regiments. However, it will probably be some time before such a work is available for even half of the more than 50 European MiG-21 regiments. The two books on the Yugoslav units in particular set standards in terms of the extent of documentary photos.

Remarkable about the two booklets on the service history of individual MiG-21 versions with the Czechoslovak Air Force, besides their solid provision of pictures and drawings, is the fact that they are not stand-alone book titles but supplements to model kits. Both are examined in more detail here. In future, then, it will be necessary to look not only at the book market to stay up to date on MiG-21 literature.

The four titles dealing with the air war – two on Vietnam, one each on the Middle East and Afghanistan – are all distinguished by adding a great many new details to the known information. With the sixth part of Arab MiGs, a series unique worldwide has (unfortunately) come to an end.

Striking about the current new publications is that several authors appear more than once and have often covered certain subjects single-handedly for years: István Toperczer has published two new books on the air war over Vietnam that considerably expand the two already available from him; Stanislav Vystavěl adds two more to his two works on the history of the Czechoslovak Air Force; Bojan Dimitrijević and Milan Micevski document the history of two more Yugoslav regiments, after Dimitrijević had already published several titles on Yugoslav aviation history; Martin Janoušek delivers two titles on the Czechoslovak MiG-21s, and the tireless Tom Cooper concludes (for the time being) his treatment of the Arab air forces while turning to the African theatre of war.

Finally, it should be noted that – unlike the last few times – there is no title from Germany or India among the current titles. Hopefully this will change by the next edition ...

28 February 2015: Another two years have passed since the last overview of MiG-21 literature, and only the fact that no new publications have arrived in the last few weeks has finally allowed the author to at least "skim" all the titles and review them briefly.

One focus of the new publications is (once again) India, where two works deal with an event that hardly receives attention elsewhere – the 50th anniversary of the MiG-21 in service with the Indian Air Force. India marks this milestone with a very beautiful photo book and a collection of recollections of those involved. The very successful use of the MiG-21 on the Indian side in the war against Pakistan and for the independence of Bangladesh is also honoured with two titles. Finally, there is also a new chronicle of an IAF squadron that owes its name "The First Supersonics" to the fact that it was the first to convert to the MiG-21 in 1963. The only drawback of India's treatment of the MiG-21 is the almost exclusively subjective approach based on the recollections of those involved, while systematic accounts, historical outlines and aircraft lists are missing.

Since it is obviously good form for well-known aviation authors to publish a work on the MiG-21, the Macedonian Trendafilovski and the Bulgarian Mladenov have also done so. While Trendafilovski provides, besides numerous facts and beautiful photos, a comprehensive history of the Yugoslav MiG-21s, Mladenov limits himself to well-known facts. Particularly noteworthy again are the two volumes of the Arab MiGs series listed below, which stand for a previously unknown depth in analysing the air war in a region.

Remarkable about the new Russian publications is that both serious works (the Yakubovich books certainly do not belong to them) deal with the same unit in an incredible quantity of pictures and text – the 234th Guards Fighter Regiment, which was responsible for the "public image" of the Soviet Air Force.

Now that MediaScript in Berlin has established itself as the publisher for memoirs on the East German Air Force, it would certainly be appropriate for it first to publish a basic work explaining all the essential connections, to which individual accounts could then refer without the same topics being dealt with again and again.

Here are the new titles:

25 March 2013: Since new books were presented in February 2010, not only three years have passed but numerous new titles dealing more or less intensively with the MiG-21 have also appeared. Highlights in the "In service" category are certainly the two "African MiGs" volumes and parts 2 and 3 of the "Arab MiGs" series, which contain much previously unpublished information.

The new works devoted to the GDR MiG-21s have above all their backward-looking terminology in common, but they nevertheless contribute pleasingly to rounding off the picture of service with the East German Air Force. A new quality in dealing specifically with the negative sides of military flight operations is represented by the volumes of "Katastrofy Awarie Uszkodzenia w polskim lotnictwie wojskowym" published so far, which evaluate incidents, accidents and crashes in a detail unknown – at least for the Warsaw Pact air forces.

It is rather astonishing to see how poorly researched a book on the aircraft of the OKB MiG can still be more than 20 years after the upheavals in Eastern Europe – see the relevant Typenkompass by a Mr Höfling. Otherwise, it is pleasing to note that almost everywhere in the world where MiG-21s flew or still fly, books are published that deal with this fact in the narrower or wider sense, and that some of these books now also enrich the author's collection.

Finally, it should be mentioned in all modesty what can be seen on every page of MiG-21.de anyway, namely the publication of the author's MiG-21 book.

Here are the new titles:

18 February 2010: The Overview, In Service, OKB MiG and GDR sections of the Bibliography chapter have been supplemented with new and newly listed older titles: