Domestic military aircraft construction has always been at a high level, and the trend was set by the Soviet Union. And some combat vehicles have no analogues at all in the world. Unfortunately, this kind of Soviet technology as fighter-bomber aircraft was pushed into the periphery of history. But this does not mean that one should forget about the best representatives of this type of aviation. This is exactly what the legendary "flying balcony" was - the MiG-27 fighter-bomber.
Fighter-bomber aviation, or IBA, today no longer functions as part of the Russian army, but until recently it was still there. But it appeared in Soviet times, shortly after the end of the Great Patriotic War. The key role in the development of the IBA was played by the Secretary General Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev, who decided to focus on combat jet aircraft.
At the behest of the government, Soviet aircraft designers not only began to develop new aircraft, but also began to reorient existing aircraft. So, for example, combat fighters were soon converted to be able to carry out strikes against ground targets.
Interesting fact: in order to distinguish among all the variety of bomber specialization machines, they began to be assigned indexes with the letter "B".
The first Soviet fighter-bomber was the Su-7B. Alas, this car has become the personification of the saying "The first pancake is lumpy." Perhaps the only advantage of this aircraft was its speed characteristics - the maximum speed of the Su-7B was 2120 km / h. However, there were many problems in it.
So, negative reviews received a small amount of combat load for a combat aircraft (2 thousand kilograms), as well as insufficient aiming accuracy due to the large sweep, which is why the pilots often missed. In addition, among other shortcomings, too long take-off run and run length were named, which is why the swept structure of the aircraft wing.
This insufficiently successful experience gave impetus to the development of a new aircraft. For the implementation of the project of a multi-mode machine with a changeable wing sweep, specialists from two Soviet aircraft construction giants at once took up - Artem Mikoyan's Design Bureau and Pavel Sukhoi's Design Bureau. And if the latter decided to work based on the same Su-7B, then the Mikoyanovskys undertook to modernize their brainchild - the MiG-23 fighter.
For the processing of the MiG-23 they took up thoroughly. At first, it was adapted to bombard ground targets by installing a new sighting and navigation system, after which it became known as the MiG-23B. After it was equipped with modernized electronics, and its index changed again - MiG-23BN.
The revision did not end there. So, the landing gear was reinforced, as well as the dismantling of the controlled air intakes - they do not need shock machines. The name of the aircraft became MiG-23BM, and so it went on a series of tests - first factory, then military. Checks and paperwork dragged on for three long years, but nevertheless, in 1975, a new fighter-bomber was put into service under the familiar name - MiG-27.
The bomber was small in size, but with a considerable take-off weight (20 thousand tons) and four tons of combat load. In addition, the aircraft's sighting and navigation system was advanced for its time: with its help, the car was perfectly controlled in all weather conditions and in the dark.
The artillery armament of the MiG-27 consisted of a six-barreled 30-mm aircraft cannon GSh-6-30A, as well as cannon containers with cannons GSh-23. All these technical characteristics of the aircraft made it popular not only among the command, but also among the pilots themselves.
Interesting fact: it was the pilots who affectionately nicknamed the MiG-27 “the flying balcony”. The reason for choosing this nickname was the beveled nose cone, which provided a wide view for the pilot - as if looking at the balcony of a multi-storey building.
Not only this brainchild of the Experimental Design Bureau of Artyom Mikoyan went down in history - another MiG once caused a real stir in America: "Fox in the sky": because of which Soviet plane in the US Congress organized emergency hearings