HOW PRETORIA AND MOSCOW SECRETLY COOPERATED TO BUILD MIG-29 ENGINES INTO SAAF MIRAGES

eBook by Kobus de Villiers

(the South African team leader)

HOE PRETORIA EN MOSKOU IN DIE GEHEIM SAAMGEWERK HET OM MIG-29 ENJINS IN TE BOU IN SALM MIRAGES

eBoek deur Kobus de Villiers

(die Suid-Afrikaanse spanleier)

ABSTRACT: How Pretoria and Moscow secretly cooperated to build MIG-29 engines into SAAF Mirages, creating the “Super Mirage F-1”. At the end of the eighties the USSR and the then (white) South African government had strengthened ties to the point of cooperating in secret in sanctions busting, intelligence sharing, and the arms industry, with Moscow simultaneously scaling down its support for the ANC. The most symbolically significant joint project initiated by the Soviet and Apartheid governments was the venture by teams of South African and USSR aeronautical engineers working together from Brezhnev’s erstwhile dacha outside Moscow, to re-design and adapt the Mirage airframes and the Klimov RD-33 engines of the MIG-29 to make such upgrades possible by replacing the jets’ original French Snecma-Atar engines (something which French engineers had deemed not technically achievable). This eBook, written by the South African team leader Kobus de Villiers and richly illustrated with photographs and technical drawings, recounts in detail from both the human and technical angles how this remarkable feat was achieved, with the resulting jet fighters flying and winning awards at international airshows.

KEYWORDS: Super Mirage F-1, MIG-29, Klimov RD-33 engine, SAAF, USSR, Apartheid South Africa, Kobus de Villiers, building MIG engines into Mirages

LANGUAGE: AFRIKAANS

To download the eBook as a .pdf, please click on THIS LINK

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