Over the airfield at Jodhpur on 27 December 2019, five grey jets with wings swept back came over in an arrowhead, flanked by Su-30MKIs. When they landed, the Aeronautica militare indiana had retired its last MiG-27, and with it its last swing-wing jet.

In India it was called the Bahadur, the brave one. NATO called it Flogger-D and Flogger-J. Its pilots had their own descriptions, most of them involving speed, noise and a cannon so violent it could shake the aircraft around it. This is the story of the MiG that was built to fly low and hit hard.

A MiG-23 with a new face

The MiG-27 Flogger began as a ground-attack conversion of the MiG-23 fighter, whose swing-wing story Afterburner told in MiG-23 Flogger: il MiG ad ala a geometria variabile temuto dai piloti americani. Mikoyan kept the basic airframe and variable-sweep wing, then changed almost everything a strike pilot cared about.

The fighter’s radar nose was replaced by a sharply sloping one that gave the pilot a far better view of the ground ahead. Russian crews nicknamed it the platypus. In place of radar, it carried a laser rangefinder and target seeker. Extra armour went around the cockpit, and a new navigation and attack system went in behind it.

Because the MiG-27 would live at low level, the MiG-23’s variable intakes and exhaust nozzle were replaced with simpler fixed ones, saving weight and maintenance. Heavier landing gear let it operate from rough airfields. Power came from a single Tumansky R-29B-300 afterburning turbojet, and under the belly sat a six-barrelled 30 mm GSh-6-30 rotary cannon.

The banshee at 100 metres

Squadron Leader Anshuman Mainkar, a former Indian MiG-27 pilot, described the jet to the aviation site Hush-Kit in 2018. Pilots controlled the wing sweep by hand: 16 degrees for take-off and landing, 45 degrees for most flying, and the full 72 degrees for a fast getaway.

He remembered a live-fire exercise in which two French Mirages trailed his formation. When the call came to push, the MiGs lit their afterburners and pulled away, and the Mirages never caught up. The price of all that low-level speed was comfort. Below about 6,000 feet the air conditioning barely worked, and pilots climbed out after landing dripping wet.

The cannon was the stuff of legend. Mainkar recalled that the aircraft seemed to stop in mid-air when he fired, with smoke and the smell of cordite filling the cockpit and the airframe shuddering under the recoil. Pilots had to fire in short bursts and exit smoothly, or risk an engine surge.

Squadron Leader Anshuman Mainkar talks about flying the MiG-27 in Indian Air Force service.

Soviet service and the road to India

The Soviet Air Force put the MiG-27 into frontline service in the mid-1970s, and it became one of the backbones of Soviet tactical strike units in East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia and at home. Its only Soviet combat came late in the Afghanistan war, in 1988 and 1989, when a regiment flew bombing missions from Shindand, held above 5,000 metres by the threat of shoulder-fired missiles.

After the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia decided in 1993 to phase out its single-engined attack jets, and the type faded from Russian service. Apart from the Soviet successor states, only India and Sri Lanka operated it. The Sri Lanka Air Force bought second-hand MiG-27s from 2000 and flew them in combat during the civil war.

India was by far the most important user. The MiG-27 entered Indian service in 1985, and Hindustan Aeronautics assembled the MiG-27ML under licence. Around 165 served with the IAF over 35 years. From the 2000s, a share of the fleet was upgraded with modern avionics, including multi-function displays, a head-up display, ring-laser-gyro navigation with GPS, and a new electronic warfare suite.

Kargil, 1999

The Bahadur’s defining war came in the summer of 1999, when Pakistani troops occupied high ground above Kargil in Kashmir. The IAF sent MiG-27s against positions on mountainsides well above 15,000 feet, firing rockets and cannon at targets tucked into ridgelines. The fuller story of the IAF’s high-altitude campaign is in La guerra aerea combattuta a 18.000 piedi.

On 27 May 1999, Flight Lieutenant Kambampati Nachiketa of No. 9 Squadron was attacking enemy positions in the Batalik sector when his MiG-27’s engine flamed out. Accounts differ on the cause: some put it down to the engine ingesting gun or rocket gases in the thin air, others to a possible missile hit. Unable to relight it, he ejected over Pakistani-held territory, was captured, and was handed back to India about a week later. He went on to fly again.

The MiG-27 fleet also took part in Operation Parakram, the long military standoff with Pakistan in 2001 and 2002, and flew in international exercises alongside American, French and other air forces. It was never an easy aeroplane, though. The IAF lost a number of MiG-27s in accidents over the years, three of them in 2019 alone.

Into the sunset at Jodhpur

By December 2019, the last operator was No. 29 Squadron at Air Force Station Jodhpur, a unit raised at Halwara in 1958 with the French Ouragan. Two other MiG-27 squadrons had already been disbanded at Hasimara in West Bengal. On 26 December, the IAF announced the farewell on social media.

The ceremony on 27 December drew the commander of South Western Air Command, Air Marshal S.K. Ghotia, along with veterans of the type. The squadron’s seven remaining jets took part, five of them in the final arrowhead flypast, and the Surya Kiran aerobatic team closed the show. One former Bahadur, TU591, now stands at the Indian Air Force Museum at Palam.

DD India’s report on the MiG-27 decommissioning ceremony at Jodhpur Air Force Station in December 2019.

The MiG-27 was not graceful and it was not forgiving. It was a heavy, fast, heavily armed bomb truck that asked a lot of the people who flew it. For 34 years it gave India a low-level punch, and when it finally flew into the sunset over Jodhpur, it took the swing-wing era of the Indian Air Force with it.

Sources: Hush-Kit (interview with Sqn Ldr Anshuman Mainkar), The Tribune, Deccan Herald, AIN Online, Aviation Defence Universe, The Better India, U.S. Air Force, Ministry of Defence (India)

Header photo: Abhi010 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0