MiG-17 at the Central Texas Airshow, USA, May 2003.
The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-17 (NATO reporting nameFresco) is a Russian jet fighter aircraft armed with 3 cannons, considered to be most effective in action against enemy aircraft. Its bombload was considered light relative to other aircraft of the time since it had been designed primarily as an interceptor.
The MiG-17 first flew in January 1950 and was in production in 1951. They were not available for the Korean War but saw considerable service as the main aircraft of the North Vietnamese Air Force during the Vietnam War, when it frequently worked in conjunction with MiG-21s ordinarily flown by Soviet or Chinese pilots.
Twenty countries flew MiG-17's. The Chinese-built version of the MiG-17 is known as the Shenyang J-5 (for local use) or F-5 (for export - not to be confused with the F-5 Freedom Fighter). Earlier, Soviet-built Chinese MiG-17s were designated J-4 or JJ-4. The Polish-built version of the MiG-17 is known as LiM-5. In 1963 Polish airircraft company started to produce development of MiG-17 called Lim-6bis which was an attack plane.
This is the SP-1 Prototype of the MIG 17F clearly visible is the widened exhaust to accommodate the afterburner and the redesigned rear fuselage.
The Mig17 was produced under license in Poland as the Lim-5 and Lim-6 in several sub variants that improved the design considerably, especially by adding a weapons pylon inboard of the drop tanks.
The various variants of the Mig17 be they Soviet made or license produced served with the air forces of at least 25 countries and continued to be effective, both as fighter bombers and as pure fighters in dogfights and short/medium range missile engagements at lower altitudes into the late 1970s.
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