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Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-3 — History, Specs & Stories

Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-3 Soviet high-altitude interceptor
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Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-3
Soviet High-Altitude Interceptor

The fastest Soviet fighter of 1941 — a thoroughbred built to kill high-flying intruders, lethal above 4,000 m and a handful for green pilots down low, where the Eastern Front was actually fought.

~640 km/hTop speed · at ~7,800 m
~12,000 mسقف الخدمة
~3,100+Aircraft built
1940–1941First flight · end of production
Photo: Vitaly V. Kuzmin · CC BY-SA 4.0
RoleHigh-altitude interceptorEraWWII · 1941محركMikulin AM-35A V12OriginUSSR · Mikoyan-GurevichStatusRetiredWant to fly a real MiG yourself?
القصة

The MiG-3: a stratosphere fighter thrown into a low-altitude war

In the late 1930s Soviet air planners wanted a fast interceptor that could catch high-flying bombers and reconnaissance aircraft over the homeland. The job went to a brand-new design office — the OKO at Moscow’s State Aircraft Factory No. 1 — led by two men whose initials would define a dynasty: Artem Mikoyan and Mikhail Gurevich. Working at speed, they wrapped an airframe around the biggest inline engine the USSR had, the Mikulin AM-35A, and produced the I-200. It first flew in the spring of 1940 and was, on paper, the fastest fighter in the Soviet inventory.

The first version, the MiG-1, was a dangerous animal — fast but unstable, with a short range and a reputation for biting inexperienced pilots. A revised model fixed the worst of it: the engine was moved forward, the wing gained dihedral, an extra fuel tank went in behind the pilot, and the canopy was reworked for a better view. That aircraft, heavier but far more usable, became the MiG-3. Its party trick was altitude: the AM-35A’s large supercharger kept the power up high, so above roughly 7,000–8,000 metres the MiG-3 was in its element, reaching about 640 km/h where rival fighters were gasping.

The problem was the war it actually got. When Germany invaded on 22 June 1941, the MiG-3 was the most numerous of the new-generation Soviet fighters — but most air combat on the Eastern Front happened low down, escorting or attacking troops, tanks and airfields. Down there the heavy, altitude-tuned MiG-3 was sluggish and unforgiving. One pilot called it, flatly, “a cow.” Worse, there were far more airframes than trained pilots to fly them, and many were destroyed on the ground in the first catastrophic days.

So the MiG-3 found its true calling not at the front but in home air defence — the PVO — guarding Moscow and Leningrad against high-flying intruders, exactly the mission it had been designed for. Its most famous pilot, Aleksandr Pokryshkin, cut his teeth on it in the opening days of the war before becoming the Soviet Union’s second-highest-scoring ace on later types. But the MiG-3’s fate was sealed by its engine: the AM-35 production line was needed to build the AM-38 for the Il-2 Sturmovik ground-attack aircraft, the machine Stalin wanted above all others. In late 1941 MiG-3 production was ordered to stop. Without an engine, the high-altitude falcon had no future.

Perfect at 4,000 m and above. At lower altitudes it was, as they say, “a cow.”Alexander Shvarev — MiG-3 pilot
01The MiG-3’s fatal compromise: a high-altitude fighter in a low-altitude war

Every strength of the MiG-3 pointed upward. The Mikulin AM-35A was geared with a large supercharger to hold its power at height, and the airframe carried a relatively high wing loading that made it stable and fast at altitude. Above about 7,000 metres it could out-run and out-climb the fighters sent against it. But that same recipe made it heavy, slow to accelerate and hard to turn down low — and it demanded a smooth, experienced hand.

The tragedy was that the 1941 air war was overwhelmingly a low-altitude war of close support: attacking columns, covering the retreat, dueling with Bf 109s a few thousand metres up. There the MiG-3 was outclassed, and it was handed to young conscript pilots with only a handful of flying hours. The aircraft that was superb where the fighting was not, and mediocre where it was, ended the year with the highest loss count of any Soviet fighter type.

Design & Engineering

What makes the MiG-3 special

01

An engine tuned for thin air

The heart of the MiG-3 was the Mikulin AM-35A, a liquid-cooled 60° V-12 of about 46.7 litres giving roughly 1,350 hp (sources vary, ~1,332–1,350 hp). Its large, high-boost supercharger kept power alive at altitude, so the fighter peaked around 7,000–8,000 m. The same big supercharger made the engine heavy and thirsty down low — strong exactly where the war mostly was not.

02

Fast, but lightly armed

Standard armament was modest: one 12.7 mm Berezin UBS و two 7.62 mm ShKAS machine guns, all cowling-mounted. Pilots widely judged it too light to down a bomber quickly. Field and factory kits added underwing 12.7 mm UBK gun pods, six RS-82 rockets or light bombs, and a few aircraft trialled 20 mm ShVAK cannon.

03

A demanding thoroughbred

High wing loading gave speed and stability at height but a tricky character near the ground: a sharp stall, an unforgiving spin and heavy controls. In skilled hands above 4,000 m it was formidable; in the hands of a barely-trained 1941 recruit it could be lethal to its own pilot. Pokryshkin likened it to a hot-tempered horse that rewarded a strong rider.

02The MiG-3’s MiG-1 origins: fixing a dangerous prototype

The MiG-3 was a rescue job on the MiG-1. Flight testing had shown the first model to be fast but directionally unstable, short on range and prone to vicious behaviour at the edge of the envelope. The fixes were methodical: the engine was shifted about 100 mm forward to improve longitudinal stability, the outer wings gained a degree of dihedral for lateral stability, a roughly 250-litre fuel tank was added under the seat to stretch the range, the radiator and oil systems were reworked, the cockpit glazing was enlarged for a better rearward view, and armour and ammunition were increased. The cost was about 250 kg of extra weight, which slightly dulled the climb and the ceiling — the price of making the design usable.

03The MiG-3’s guns: why Soviet pilots wanted more

Firepower was the MiG-3’s weakest suit. A single heavy Berezin and two rifle-calibre ShKAS were adequate against a fighter but slow to bring down a well-built bomber, the very target the interceptor existed to kill. Units improvised: some aircraft carried a pair of underwing UBK heavy machine-gun pods, others were fitted for RS-82 rockets or small bomb loads for ground attack, and a handful were tested with 20 mm ShVAK cannon. None of the fixes fully solved the problem before the type left the assembly line.

Technical Data

Full MiG-3 specifications

Airframe & Performance

طاقم
1
طول
8.25 m
طول الجناحين
10.20 m
ارتفاع
3.30 m
منطقة الجناح
17.44 m²
الوزن الفارغ
~2,700 kg
Loaded weight
~3,350 kg
Max speed
~640 km/h at ~7,800 m
Speed at sea level
~505 km/h
سقف الخدمة
~12,000 m
يتراوح
~820 km (varies by source)

Propulsion, Armament & Cost

محرك
1 × Mikulin AM-35A V12
Power
~1,350 hp (~993 kW)
Guns
1 × 12.7 mm UBS + 2 × 7.62 mm ShKAS
Underwing options
RS-82 rockets, bombs, UBK pods
First flight
29 October 1940 (MiG-3 config)
Built
~3,100+ (contested; see note)
Unit cost
No reliable public figure (planned economy)
Cost per flight hour
No reliable public figure exists
04The MiG-3’s operating costs: why no dollar figure exists

The MiG-3 was built inside a wartime centrally planned economy and never sold on any open market, so a meaningful flyaway unit price — and any cost-per-flight-hour figure — simply does not exist in the public record. Soviet accounting used non-convertible rubles and factory quotas, not Western-style life-cycle costs. Any precise dollar number attached to a MiG-3 today is an invention. The production total is contested too: reputable sources cite anywhere from about 3,120 to 3,300 aircraft, and some totals fold in the ~100 MiG-1s. We use “roughly 3,100+” throughout.

Timeline

From high-altitude hope to grounded falcon

1939

A rushed new design office

The OKO team at Factory No. 1 under Mikoyan and Gurevich begins the I-200, wrapped around the powerful Mikulin AM-35A engine.

Apr 1940

The MiG-1 flies

The I-200 prototype takes to the air — the fastest Soviet fighter yet, but unstable and short-ranged.

Oct 1940

The MiG-3 takes shape

The refined configuration flies on 29 October and is accepted in December, entering service through the spring of 1941.

22 Jun 1941

Barbarossa

With ~900–1,000 in service, the MiG-3 is the most numerous new Soviet fighter — but there are far more airframes than trained pilots. Pokryshkin flies his first, chaotic combats this day.

Winter 1941

Guarding Moscow

As frontline units are ground down, survivors concentrate in PVO home defence around Moscow and Leningrad — the high-altitude role the aircraft was built for.

Oct 1941

Traded for the Sturmovik

Production is curtailed: the AM-35 line is switched to the AM-38 engine for the Il-2. Without an engine, the MiG-3 is doomed.

1942

Fading from the front

Frontline VVS use collapses; a dwindling number soldier on in home-defence and night interception before the type disappears.

2010

Raised from the tundra

Aviarestoration in Novosibirsk rebuilds MiG-3s from wartime wrecks recovered near Murmansk; a restored example flies again decades after the war.

Stories & Eyewitnesses

From the cockpit: twelve MiG-3 stories

Origins

The falcon built in a hurry

A brand-new design office wrapped a fighter around the biggest engine the USSR had — in months.

Read the full story
The MiG-3 was born of urgency. In 1939 a new experimental design bureau, the OKO at Moscow’s Factory No. 1, was handed the job of building a fast high-altitude interceptor. Its leaders, Artem Mikoyan and Mikhail Gurevich, worked at breakneck speed, designing the I-200 around the powerful Mikulin AM-35A inline engine. The prototype flew in the spring of 1940 and was the fastest fighter in the Soviet inventory — the first aircraft to carry the initials that would become one of aviation’s most famous names.
Engineering

An engine that loved thin air

The AM-35A’s big supercharger kept the power up high — and weighed the fighter down low.

Read the full story
Everything about the MiG-3 pointed upward. The Mikulin AM-35A V-12 used a large, high-boost supercharger to hold its roughly 1,350 hp at altitude, letting the fighter reach about 640 km/h up around 7,800 metres. But that same supercharger made the engine heavy and inefficient near the ground. The MiG-3 was, in effect, a specialist tuned for a slice of sky most of the war never used.
MiG-1 to MiG-3

Fixing a dangerous prototype

The first model was fast but bit its pilots. The MiG-3 was the fix.

Read the full story
The MiG-1 was quick but unstable, short-ranged and prone to nasty stall and spin behaviour. The MiG-3 corrected it: the engine moved forward for stability, the wings gained dihedral, a fuel tank went in behind the pilot, and the canopy was reworked for a better view. The changes added about 250 kg — slightly blunting climb and ceiling — but turned a hazardous prototype into a usable front-line fighter.
Handling

“A cow” at low level

Superb above 4,000 m, heavy and sluggish down where the fighting was.

Read the full story
Pilots were blunt about the MiG-3’s split personality. Alexander Shvarev remembered it as “perfect at altitudes of 4,000 m and above,” but at lower altitudes “it was, as they say, a cow.” With a high wing loading and an altitude-tuned engine, the fighter was fast and stable high up and heavy, slow-turning and unforgiving low down — the opposite of what most 1941 dogfights demanded.
Barbarossa

Caught on the back foot

The most numerous new Soviet fighter — and one of the worst-placed to fight in June 1941.

Read the full story
When Germany attacked on 22 June 1941, the MiG-3 was the most numerous of the USSR’s modern fighters, with perhaps 900–1,000 in service. It was also badly placed: there were far more aircraft than trained pilots, many were caught and destroyed on the ground, and those that got airborne were dragged into the low-altitude brawls where the type was weakest. Losses were catastrophic in the opening weeks.
Pokryshkin

A tragic first kill

On the war’s first day the future ace shot down one of his own side’s aircraft.

Read the full story
By his own memoir account, Aleksandr Pokryshkin’s first aerial victory on 22 June 1941 was a disaster: he shot down a Soviet Su-2 light bomber, a new and near-secret type his unit had never been shown. Realising his mistake when he saw the red stars, and with no radio to warn his wingmen, he cut across their flight paths to break off the attack. It was a grim introduction to a war he would end as a triple Hero of the Soviet Union.
Pokryshkin

The Messerschmitt over the Prut

His first genuine kill — then, days later, shot down and a long walk home.

Read the full story
Around 23 June 1941 Pokryshkin scored his first true victory in the MiG-3, downing a Messerschmitt Bf 109 and narrowly escaping the others. His luck ran out on 3 July: hit by anti-aircraft fire over the Prut river, he force-landed behind enemy lines and walked back to his regiment over several days — arriving to find comrades who had given him up for dead already dividing his belongings.
Home defence

Guarding Moscow’s sky

Pushed out of the front line, the MiG-3 found its real job over the capital.

Read the full story
As frontline fighter units were worn down through 1941, the MiG-3 concentrated where its altitude performance actually mattered: the PVO air-defence force protecting Moscow and Leningrad from high-flying bombers and reconnaissance aircraft. It was the mission the designers had intended all along, and the role in which the type lingered longest, into 1942 and beyond as a night and high-altitude interceptor.
التسليح

Three guns and a grievance

Light firepower for a bomber-killer — a complaint that followed the type to the end.

Read the full story
The MiG-3’s single 12.7 mm Berezin and two rifle-calibre ShKAS were widely seen as too weak to bring down a sturdy bomber quickly — awkward for an aircraft built to intercept them. Units bolted on underwing UBK machine-gun pods, RS-82 rockets and small bombs, and a few aircraft trialled 20 mm ShVAK cannon, but the firepower problem was never fully solved before production ended.
Production

Traded for the Sturmovik

Stalin wanted Il-2s. The MiG-3 lost its engine to build them.

Read the full story
The MiG-3 shared its AM-35 engine family and tooling with the AM-38 that powered the Il-2 Sturmovik — the ground-attack aircraft Stalin prized above all. A famous telegram reproached factory managers that the Il-2 was needed “like air, like bread.” With ground attack the overriding priority, the engine line was switched, and in late 1941 MiG-3 production was ordered to stop. A superb interceptor was ended not by an enemy but by a supply decision.
Legacy

The most-lost Soviet fighter

A hard first year left the MiG-3 with a grim statistical record.

Read the full story
The MiG-3 recorded the highest loss count of any Soviet fighter type — a reflection less of a bad aircraft than of a bad match: a high-altitude specialist thrown into a low-altitude war, flown by under-trained pilots in the catastrophic summer of 1941. By 1942 it had all but vanished from frontline fighter regiments, obsolete as a day fighter well before the war was won.
Survivors

Raised from the tundra

Decades later, wrecks recovered from the Arctic put MiG-3s back in the air.

Read the full story
Almost no original MiG-3s survived the war intact, but the type flies again thanks to Aviarestoration in Novosibirsk, which rebuilt several aircraft from wartime wrecks recovered in the Murmansk region. Because the original AM-35A is unobtainable, the restorations use Allison V-1710 engines. One example returned to the air around 2010, and the Military Aviation Museum in Virginia keeps another — the only MiG-3 in North America.
Gallery

The MiG-3 in pictures

A restored MiG-3 in Soviet Air Force markings the fastest Soviet fighter of 1941.
A restored MiG-3 in Soviet Air Force markings — the fastest Soviet fighter of 1941.Photo: Vitaly V. Kuzmin · CC BY-SA 4.0
A MiG-3 airborne once more the high-altitude thoroughbred back in its element.
A MiG-3 airborne once more — the high-altitude thoroughbred back in its element.Photo: Alex Polezhaev · CC BY 2.0
The restored White 1 MiG-3, its long nose housing the big Mikulin AM-35A V12.
The restored ‘White 1’ MiG-3, its long nose housing the big Mikulin AM-35A V12.Photo: Alan Wilson · CC BY-SA 2.0
Broadside: the clean, altitude-optimised lines that made the MiG-3 fast up high.
Broadside: the clean, altitude-optimised lines that made the MiG-3 fast up high.Photo: Aeroprints.com · CC BY-SA 3.0
Nose and propeller detail a fighter built around one very large inline engine.
Nose and propeller detail — a fighter built around one very large inline engine.Photo: Alex Polezhaev · CC BY 2.0
A MiG-3 on display at a Russian airshow, wearing wartime red-star markings.
A MiG-3 on display at a Russian airshow, wearing wartime red-star markings.Photo: Artem Katranzhi · CC BY-SA 2.0
Watch

The MiG-3 in motion

Palm Springs Air Museum: MiG-3 — Warbird Wednesday Episode #88. An accredited museum’s on-camera history of the type, the engine that defined it and its hard first year on the Eastern Front.

Operations

Where the MiG-3 flew

Combat Record

The MiG-3’s war: defence, not dogfighting

The MiG-3 was an interceptor, and its record is written in home defence and hard first-year losses rather than in a long tally of dogfight kills. It was the most numerous modern Soviet fighter when Germany invaded, yet it was thrown into a low-altitude war it was never built for. Its best work was done high over Moscow and Leningrad — and in the hands of pilots like Pokryshkin, who learned to fight on it before moving to better types.

~900–1,000In service on 22 June 1941 — the most numerous new Soviet fighter
HighestLoss count of any Soviet fighter type in 1941
4,000 m+Altitude band where the MiG-3 dominated

Compare the combat record of every military aircraft. Figures as of 2026.

Questions & Answers

Everything people ask about the MiG-3

Can I fly in a Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-3?
No — the MiG-3 is a rare WWII-era single-seat fighter, only a handful survive worldwide, and there are no passenger rides in one. You can, however, fly in several genuine ex-military jets today, including real MiGs — see migflug.com/flights-prices/.
How fast was the MiG-3?
About 640 km/h at its best altitude of roughly 7,800 m, dropping to around 505 km/h at sea level. That made it the fastest Soviet fighter in service in 1941 — but only up high, where its supercharged engine came into its own.
Why was the MiG-3 poor at low altitude?
Its Mikulin AM-35A engine was tuned for altitude with a large supercharger, and the airframe had a high wing loading. Together they made the fighter fast and stable up high but heavy, sluggish and hard to turn near the ground — exactly where most Eastern Front air combat took place.
Why did MiG-3 production stop so soon?
Its AM-35 engine shared a production line with the AM-38 that powered the Il-2 Sturmovik ground-attack aircraft. With the Il-2 the top Soviet priority in 1941, the engine line was switched over and MiG-3 production was ordered to end in late 1941. Without an engine, the aircraft had no future.
Did Aleksandr Pokryshkin fly the MiG-3?
Yes. The Soviet Union’s second-highest-scoring ace flew the MiG-3 in the opening days of the war in 1941, including his first combats over the southern front, before converting to later fighters such as the P-39 Airacobra.
How many MiG-3s were built?
Roughly 3,100 or more — sources vary between about 3,120 and 3,300, and some totals include the ~100 earlier MiG-1s. We use “roughly 3,100+” and treat the exact figure as contested.
Are any MiG-3s still flying?
A few. Almost none survived the war intact, but Aviarestoration in Novosibirsk has rebuilt several from Arctic wrecks using Allison engines, and at least one flies. The Military Aviation Museum in Virginia holds another — the only MiG-3 in North America.
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Related Aircraft

Continue the tour

The WorkhorseYakovlev Yak-9The most-produced Soviet fighter of the war — light, nimble and built for the low-level fight the MiG-3 struggled in.Read the Yak-9 storyThe BrawlerLavochkin La-5The radial-engined fighter that gave the VVS a true low-altitude match for the Luftwaffe from 1942.Read the La-5 storyThe PredecessorPolikarpov I-16The stubby 1930s fighter the MiG-3 was meant to replace — and which fought on beside it in 1941.Read the I-16 story
Sources & Further Reading

Every MiG-3 fact, checked