MiG-3 by Trumpeter in 1/48th Scale By Stephen Tontoni

The History

Throughout most of the 1930’s, Polikarpov esigned many of the fighters that were used by the Soviet Air Force. He developed innovative and successful designs that filled their needs adequately, although some stayed in active roles a bit too long. In 1938, he began preliminary work on the I-180 prototype that would eventually develop into the MiG-1 through MiG-3 series of fast fighters. But he was not to see these through; in 1939, he fell out of Stalin’s good graces. In near-exile, Polikarpov went on to design a number of fairly good aircraft that never saw production; in fact, he was very fortunate to survive in the face of Stalin’s paranoia. The I-180 project, however, was handed over to the new design bureau of Mikoyan and Gurevich. Most of the subsequent work was done by Gurevich, but there was a desire to call the line of aircraft “Mikoyan”. Out of respect for his colleague and the tremendous work he had done, Artyom Mikoyan insisted that the design bureau would retain both of their names, and thus Mikoyan-Gurevich was born. The acronym became the now-famous MiG. Mikoyan was not always the most loyal of friends however; he definitely knew when to pick his battles. In the development of the operational series of MiG-3’s, some rather serious flaws were discovered and a scapegoat was needed. Major General A. I. Filin was accused of trumped up charges of sabotage and delaying the project. Mikoyan testified at the military-style tribunal against his good friend, and Filin was subsequently shot.

The MiG-3 was a fast high-altitude fighter capable of tangling with the German Bf109E in 1941, and some pilots had success with it. The MiG-3 had several strikes against it though. First, it was developed as a high-altitude interceptor, while most of the air battles over the Soviet Union were fought at low altitude. Second, Stalin’s purges of the 1930’s eliminated much of the skilled command both on the land in the air. All units, by the time that Operation Barbarossa commenced, were lead by political commissars rather than military tacticians. Finally, the pilots were not trained well to fly the MiG monoplane, so although it was at the front in force, when push came to shove, they opted to use their obsolete biplanes. As a result, huge numbers of the MiG-3’s were either destroyed on the ground or were captured as Operation Barbarossa overran huge areas of Soviet territory. The design was fairly simple, using both wooden and metal construction. The majority of the wings were wood while about half the fuselage was wood. Visibility over its long nose could be poor but its wide track made ground handling fairly stable, especially over rough fields. Originally, it had a limited punch with just three machine guns firing through the propeller arc, but later variants carried machine gun pods under the wings to give it more firepower and a better rate of fire.

Ironically, these pods were often removed in the field, thereby limited its effectiveness. This was at time in which more guns and higher caliber cannon were becoming integral to fighter design. Its operational life was only a year or two before it was out-classed by newer German fighters (most notably the Fw-190) and well as replaced by newer Soviet birds (Yak’s and LaGG’s). So in a nutshell, this was a capable aircraft when it arrived at its units, but wasn’t utilized in any numbers, after which it had a very short life before it was considered obsolete.

The Kit

Trumpeter chose to model an early MiG-3, so it has a more complex series of intakes on the cowl, but lacks leading edge slats. There’s also no shoe for a hucks starter in the spinner. All of these are fairly simple conversions if you’d like to build a late-model MiG-3, but I have to think that Trumpeter will release later variants eventually. The parts are nicely molded in medium gray styrene, and it’s very fully detailed. I’ve been given to understand that this is a scaled-down version of their 1/32nd scale MiG-3 kit. Looking at the way it’s designed, that’s believable, but I don’t have the big kit for comparison. Consequently, you’ll find the level of detail to be quite good on this kit, from the interior (very logical and pretty much click-fits) to the wheel wells and even the dropped flaps with interior detail about which I’ll elaborate later. The decals are great and went down easily. The clear parts are very clear and thin. The canopy is molded in two parts so it begs to be left open to show off the interior detailing.

The Build

I built this FAST. Because we were coming up on the IPMS Vancouver show on October 13, I realized that I needed to enter something in a serious category. The other model that I built last summer, the Eduard Nieuport 16, suffered a catastrophic drop on a sidewalk, so I was empty-handed. I was contemplating how time had slipped away from me when I was at Skyway Model Shop on October 6 and saw this kit. As I looked at the parts, its logical construction, absolute lack of flash or molding deformations…I thought “I could build this in a week” and bought it immediately. I took that kit home and immediately started the clean up process, which was pretty minimal on this kit. The parts are very cleanly molded without flash or mold part lines that need to be addressed. It was also fairly obvious early on that with the excellent engineering on this kit, it’d pretty much fall together.

So that first evening I had the kit, I went down to the shop and fired up the compressor. I first shot all interior parts with Floquil Grimy Black. I also hit the prop, wheels, flaps, etc. As soon as that was done, I shot several color cups of lacquer thinner through my Iwata, then shot RLM02 gray down at an angle to create some depth on the parts. I applied decals on an otherwise boring instrument panel (I will confess here and now that my instrument panel is more interesting, albeit less than accurate, as a result of applying the instrument face decals), did some dry brushing and began assembling the interior. I left off the gunsight until later which was a tactical error. It was extremely difficult to attach the gunsight at the end (which is my preferred approach) because the windscreen is so deep. I finally bungled it in, but it took several attempts and each one made it a little bit messier. Of note here; the MiG-3 seat harnesses are fed through slots in the back of seat. Trumpeter didn’t mold in those slots, so I recommend you drill and open them up before painting. I figured they came down over the top, and had to fix that error when I discovered it, which was AFTER I’d already glued the seat in and closed up the fuselage. So I had to rip the seat out to correct that. (I used Eduard pre-colored seat harnesses from a Luftwaffe set, but added some bits to make it resemble the Soviet seat harnesses) Fix it early and avoid that trouble!

Since the flaps were molded separately on the kit, I decided early on to build the model with the flaps at least partially dropped. In looking at my Mushroom Model book on the MiG-1 to 3, I saw that the interior of the inboard and outboard flaps had detail in relief. Trumpeter only included it on the inboard flaps, leaving the outboard flaps smooth. Further, they didn’t do anything to suggest wing ribbing. On the real thing, there is metal ribbing inside the wing over the inboard flaps, but the wing over the outboard flaps is wooden, so that’s smooth except for three very prominent holes made for the flap actuators. I did my best to replicate this missing detail while I was waiting for the glue to dry on the interior assembly. Another issue I had with the kit around the flap detail was at the wing root. Trumpeter did nothing to box in the entire flap opening so if you’d look under, you’d see up into the fuselage. I glued in some sheet styrene and mixed up some Epoxy Sculpt to fill any gaps. Also of note, should you decide to build this model with the flaps open, on the MiG-3 the flaps did not extend to the trailing edge of the wing. They stopped short of it. As a result there is a thin lip that is painted the underside color; this is shown very clearly in at least one of the photos on this page. The inside of the flaps and wing will be whatever interior color you believe is correct. Yes, there’s some controversy over what color the interior on this plane was during WWII. You can’t really trust museum aircraft since many have been painted incorrectly over the years. You probably won’t go wrong with anything from RLM02 (gray) that I chose to use, some version of sky blue, or something in between. Don’t worry; the color police aren’t giving tickets any more. That first night, I was able to close up the fuselage and attach the wing and horizontal stabilizers. On the upper wing halves they’ve got some sort of clip molded in to ensure a tight fit to the fuselage. I followed instructions, but the clip, rather than pull the wing tight, seemed to cause a gap. I will build this kit again, and remove that clip prior to assembly. That was the only place I needed to fill anything on the model due to fit issues. The very next day, I finished dressing the seams (minimal really) and cleaned up the area of the flap where I’d used Epoxy Sculpt. That was also very minimal since it’s water soluble until cured; I had finger-smoothed that the night before so it wasn’t a problem at all. After attaching the windscreen and the rear canopy hood, I masked and shot Alclad primer. I thought that Alclad primer would shoot like Alclad, that is, without thinning. That’s not correct; it went on rough as a result. I paid the price for cutting corners; I should have used a primer I knew, or tested the Alclad before using it on a project. Anyway, it meant that I had to use a Scotch-Brite pad to smooth over that roughness. I didn’t get it all and you can see some issues on the final model.

All the build after this went pretty much straightforward, following the instructions. During all the painting stages, I just shot lacquer thinner through my airbrush to clear it, and then put new color in the color cup. The only time I bothered to let things dry a little more was if masking was needed. That’s really the beauty of shooting enamels; they dry very quickly. I shot a light blue for the underside, then masked and shot Russian topside green. I free-handed the tiger stripes using Floquil Oily Black, and regretted that choice of color. Oily Black doesn’t really cover well, so it didn’t look like camouflage as much as very bizarre weathering! So over those stripes I shot Floquil Grimy Black and it seemed to work out all right. I hit that with Duracryl, and then came back later that day to apply the decals. I used the kit Soviet insignia, and they went down admirably well, responding to Solvaset. The marking I chose was one that I found in the Mushroom Models book; it was more interesting than most of the other early variant MiG-3’s. After the decals had some time to dry, I sealed them in with Duracryl. Over that I shot all the panel lines and rivet detail with very thinned Grimy Black and polished with Novus plastic polish. This removes the dark gray from everywhere but the recesses. The beauty of a dark gray for getting into recesses is that it looks dark on a light surface and light on a dark surface. As soon as that was completed, I overshot the entire model with Testor’s Dull-Cote.

With a bit of weathering here and there, attaching hypodermic tube for the machine gun blast tubes, lead wire for the brake lines, and radio aerial, I was pretty much done. I succeeded in getting this model built in less than a week so that I could bring it with me to the show at IPMS Vancouver.

I used my work planner (PDA) to write down the various stages of building the model, and what needed to be done in each session. By following a fairly rigorous schedule, I was able to complete all the necessary steps to get the model completed by the following Thursday; I slapped it together in 5 days. That’s pretty much a record for me since I’ve come back to the hobby as an adult.

Conclusion

I didn’t measure this model to see how accurate it is in profile, but it sure looks like all the MiG-3 pictures that I’ve seen. I really had fun building this one and recommend it to anyone without any reservations. Build it and have fun. I’ll next wait and see if Trumpeter decides to release a later variant. If they don’t, I’ll get another of this kit and convert it myself.