all right so I'm standing here in front
of a mig-21
now this aircraft was in service in the
Finnish Air Force from the 1960s onwards
and it's a really special part in
aviation history not just for Finland
but pretty much aviation history as a
whole now the story of the mig-21 is
making it to Finland is more or less a
political story and in 1960s early 1960s
this plane was pretty much
state-of-the-art it was incredibly fast
it was one of the most modern aircrafts
out there and of course the Soviet Union
guarded make 21
pretty much for themselves now with them
guarding it for themselves this meant
that even countries in the Warsaw Pact
yeah they are their allies kind of in
Eastern Europe didn't yet receive this
aircraft that took them a couple of
years however Finland gotten really
early in fact Finland was the first
country to use MIG 21s outside of the
Soviet Union
yeah and this is incredibly interesting
and bizarre really because Finland was
not an allied of the Soviet Union but at
the same time Finland was also not
exactly an ally of the West it was in a
very peculiar spot being just on the
border of the Soviet Union and it was a
balancing act that had to be struck
between the west and essentially is the
Soviet Union now what happened in the
1960s is that President kiss : went to
the Soviet Union and he or as at least
the Soviets already knew that Finland
was looking for its next generation
fighter aircraft and they heard that the
defense had approached Sweden for some
of the early versions of the sabda
and in order to get maybe a little bit
of influence on Finland in order to stop
them from going too far to the west they
offered the big 21 this is quite an
offer you gotta say as I said nobody had
this aircraft except the Russians the
Soviets now the first make twenty ones
that make it to Finland are make twenty
ones f-14 so this is quite an early
version however later on you would also
get the mig-21 this which was of course
an upgrade to the earlier variants it's
quite an interesting story how Finland
started to operate these as well what
happened is essentially that pilots were
chosen as some of these pilots already
had experience flying there for example
the vampire and they were shipped off to
the Soviet Union they weren't told where
they were going
they weren't told what they were
supposed to do if we just put on a train
off to the Soviet Union you go and they
ended up after a couple of days of trips
in Kezia and over there they ran into
Soviet pilots instructors now this is
when a sort of language barrier problem
developed because the Russians didn't
speak Finnish and this finns only spoke
a little bit of broken russian but
eventually they could more or less
explain how these aircraft work to the
finns now during this time there's two
very interesting things will happen
first of all one morning the finnish
pilots that are supposed to be training
on the mig-21s that day find that their
barracks and the airfield is essentially
deserted all the instructors left they
don't know where they are nobody has
told them anything
and after a couple of days these guys
come back and they don't really explain
a word but later on the pilots realize
the Finnish pilots realized that there
was a thing called the Cuban Missile
Crisis and these instructors had been
pulled out of the base probably because
of this little incident now one other
little trivia piece of trivia that comes
from that time when the
pilots were training in the Soviet Union
to become mix 21 pilots is that on one
of the days they suddenly saw a flash on
the horizon and it turned out that the
Soviet Union had in fact tested an
atomic bomb more or less in the vicinity
obviously quite a few hundred kilometers
away but close enough for the pilots to
notice the flash and the Sark part of
that story is that apparently a lot of
the pilots that were then later on
mig-21 pilots actually died of cancer so
that might actually in fact be related
and it gives us a little bit of a sad
twist to the story
really but the mig-21 is an incredible
aircraft for its time it's extremely
fast and it came as a shock to everybody
really that Finland oh the Sun is come
along that's beautiful
get a better shot now but yeah it became
as a shock to everybody that Finland
suddenly had this is amazing kind of
fighter whereas before they had
essentially had to do with outdated
vampires at that point when they got
them in the mid 50s and they really had
operated second-rate aircraft ever since
World War two and with the mig-21 they
were back at business and it's really a
fascinating tale really of aviation
history but touches aviation history but
how politics will be influences
sometimes the capability that an
aircraft choosing that an Air Force has
and of course you can see the finish
round oh this was the finish roundel
that they received after world war ii
obviously the e symbol they had before
that came out had fallen out of favour
with the world even though it didn't had
nothing to do with the symbol that we
associate to to that timeframe and I was
at the serial number and he 135 now
interestingly enough attack actually is
that the aircraft that the Russians
wanted to avoid Finland of getting that
this AB dokkum ended up being in the
Spanish Air Force as well and later on
about half of the Finnish Air Force was
composed out of these vic-20 ones
and half of it was this after Dakin but
that's the story for another time I hope
you like the look of this mig-21 now I
hope that you enjoyed this look at the
mig-21 in the finnish air force and I
want to give special thanks here to the
finish aviation museum for having
welcomed me and especially the Valerie
who has gone into detail with so many of
the aircraft they have you're over 80
aircraft in their exhibition and he's
really explained so much detail and
stuff that I didn't myself didn't know
and especially the things that he told
me about the mig-21 and its significance
for Finland is quite astonishing in the
description box below this video you'll
find a lot of information of the Finnish
Aviation Museum you'll find a website
their social media and a YouTube channel
they already have couple videos uploaded
as well make it even check that out they
really have some very very interesting
stuff and some of the aircraft they have
here are one-of-a-kind and extremely
important in aviation history now if you
want to support my content a little bit
more and essentially make videos such as
this one possible why not check out on
patreon patreon you can make small
contributions each month to allow me to
visit museums like such as this get new
resources for my video and also buy the
equipment that I need now as always I
hope that you guys have a great day
good hunting and see on the sky