China’s jet training system in the late 1950s was built on Soviet hardware. Students moved from the CJ-5 (a licence-built Yak-18) to the JJ-2, the Chinese MiG-15UTI, and then on to the J-5 fighter. That worked, but the MiG-15UTI was a generation behind the aircraft its graduates went on to fly. The J-5 had a thinner, more sharply swept wing, different airbrakes and a different feel at high Mach numbers, and conversion to it had to be done solo.

By the mid-1960s the PLAAF was expanding rapidly and building its own aircraft in quantity at Shenyang, Nanchang and Chengdu. A trainer that matched the J-5 was the obvious next step, and it could be built from parts already in production. Chengdu’s engineers took the J-5 airframe, the airbrakes of the J-5A and the two-seat forward fuselage of the JJ-2, and lengthened the nose to accommodate the second cockpit. The non-afterburning WP-5D engine saved weight and fuel and simplified maintenance in a training fleet. The JJ-5 first flew on 8 May 1966, just as the Cultural Revolution began to disrupt Chinese industry, yet production continued for almost two decades. It remains one of the clearest examples of the Chinese aviation industry adapting a Soviet design to its own needs rather than simply copying it.

When China exported fighters in the 1960s and 1970s, a trainer usually came with them. The FT-5 was that trainer for customers of the F-5 (the export J-5) and the F-6, China’s MiG-19. Pakistan, which had switched from American to Chinese fighters after the 1965 war, set up No. 1 Fighter Conversion Unit on 28 April 1975 specifically to convert pilots onto Chinese jets, starting with six FT-5s and building up to about 25.

Tanzania received up to 22 FT-5s from 1973. Sudan had FT-5s from 1969, Zambia took a mixed batch of F-5s and FT-5s in the late 1970s, and Zimbabwe leased two around 1986. Albania, isolated from both Moscow and the West, flew FT-5s from Kuçovë alongside its J-5s and J-6s until its jet force was grounded in the 2000s. Sri Lanka received two FT-5s in February 1991 as part of the package that founded its first fighter squadron. North Korea took the largest export fleet of all. For many of these air forces the FT-5 was the first jet in which a student could fly with an instructor behind him.

Because the forward fuselage came from the JJ-2, the JJ-5’s cockpits are essentially MiG-15UTI cockpits: two tandem seats under separate canopy sections, the instructor behind and slightly above the student, with duplicated controls and a basic set of flight and engine instruments. Both seats have ejection seats of the early Soviet type. The arrangement was familiar to any instructor who had flown the JJ-2, which eased the introduction of the new trainer.

It was not comfortable. An Aeroplane Monthly feature on the Pakistan Air Force in 2002 described the FT-5 as popular with students but limited by cramped cockpit space, poor air-conditioning and short endurance, all of which mattered in the heat of Mianwali. The instructor’s forward view, as in the MiG-15UTI, was restricted by the student’s seat and canopy frame, so landings from the rear seat demanded practice. None of this stopped the type being used for fighter conversion until 2012.

• JJ-5: PLAAF designation, Jianjiji Jiaolianji-5 (fighter trainer 5).
• FT-5: export designation for the same aircraft, used by Pakistan, Albania, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Sudan, Zambia, Zimbabwe, North Korea and others.
• J-5 / F-5: the single-seat MiG-17F fighter from Shenyang on which the trainer is based.
• J-5A: the radar-equipped MiG-17PF copy that supplied the JJ-5’s airbrakes.
• JJ-2: China’s MiG-15UTI, source of the tandem cockpit section.

There is no public cost data for PLAAF or Pakistani JJ-5 operations, and no JJ-5 is known to us on a Western civil register, so any hourly figure is an estimate. The best guide is the closely related MiG-15UTI and MiG-17, which private owners in the United States operate. Their quoted costs, dominated by fuel for a thirsty centrifugal-flow turbojet plus engine and airframe reserves, typically run to several thousand US dollars per hour. On that basis US$3,000 to 5,000 per hour is a reasonable working range for a JJ-5 in Western hands.

For its military operators the economics were different. The JJ-5 had no afterburner, shared spares and engines with fleets of J-5s, and was built from components already in production. For air forces equipped with Chinese MiG-17s and MiG-19s, it was the cheapest way to give a student real swept-wing jet hours with an instructor on board.