Mikoyan - Gurevich MiG - 1 The Mikoyan - Gurevich MiG - 1 ( Микоян - Гуревич МиГ - 1 ) was a Soviet fighter aircraft of World War II that was designed to meet a requirement for a high - altitude fighter issued in 1939 . To minimize demand on strategic material s such as aluminum , the aircraft was mostly constructed from steel tubing and wood . Flight testing revealed a number of deficiencies , but it was ordered into production before they could be fixed . Although difficult to handle , one hundred were built before the design was modified into the MiG - 3 . The aircraft was issued to fighter regiments of the Soviet Air Forces ( VVS ) in 1941 , but most were apparently destroyed during the opening days of Operation Barbarossa , the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 . Design and development . Design phase . The MiG - 1 was designed in response to a requirement for a high - altitude fighter with an inline engine issued by the VVS in January 1939 . Initially the aircraft , designated " I - 200 " , was designed in the Polikarpov construction bureau . Work started in June 1939 , under the direction of Nikolai Polikarpov and his assistant M . Tetivikin . Polikarpov himself preferred radial engines and promoted his I - 180 design at that time , but when the powerful Mikulin AM - 37 inline engine became available , he decided to use it in a fighter . The approach that he selected was to build the smallest possible aircraft around the intended powerplant , thereby minimising weight and drag — the philosophy of the light fighter . As specified , the aircraft was to be capable of reaching 670 km / h ( 417 mph ) . In August 1939 , Polikarpov fell out of favour with Joseph Stalin and as a result , when Polikarpov went in November 1939 to tour Germany ' s aviation works , the Soviet authorities decided to scatter his construction team and create a new Experimental Construction Section ( OKO ) , headed by Artem Mikoyan and Mikhail Gurevich , which remained formally subordinated to Polikarpov bureau until June 1940 . Further work upon the I - 200 design was assigned to Mikoyan and Gurevich , who later became recognized — not with full justice — as its designers . The MiG - 1 was a low - wing monoplane with a tail - dragging undercarriage of mixed construction . Due to shortages of light alloys the rear fuselage was made from wood , but the front fuselage , from the propeller to the rear of the cockpit was a welded steel tube truss covered by duralumin . The bulk of the wing was wooden , but the center section was all - metal with a steel I - section main spar . The wing used a Clark YH profile . It was evenly tapered with rounded tips and the outer wing panels had 5° of dihedral . All three landing gear wheels retracted hydraulically ; the main units inwards into the wing center section . The cockpit was situated well aft , which seriously limited forward vision when landing and taxiing . The AM - 37 engine was not yet available and the less powerful V - 12 Mikulin AM - 35 A had to be substituted . It had six exhaust ejectors , one for each pair of cylinders , that provided some additional thrust . It drove a VISh - 22Ye controllable pitch propeller in diameter . The air intakes for the supercharger were in the wing roots and the oil cooler was on the port side of the engine cowling . The radiator was underneath the cockpit . Armament included two fuselage - mounted ShKAS machine gun s and one UBS machine gun . The result was a highly conventional aircraft that first flew on schedule on 5 April 1940 at the Khodynka Aerodrome in Moscow with chief test pilot Arkadij Ekatov at the controls . On 24 May the first prototype attained a speed of 648 . 5 km / h ( 402 . 9 mph ) at 6 , 900 m ( 22 , 638 ft ) . It could not , however , attain the speed originally specified by the Air Force with this engine . The second prototype took to the air on 9 May , but the third aircraft , the first to be armed , was forced to wait until 6 June , as problems with its synchronization gear prolonged the ground firing tests . On 5 August was reached at using maximum boost . Time to altitude figures were 5 . 1 minutes to and 7 . 2 minutes to and speeds at lower altitudes were at and at . Production and improvements . The I - 200 was ordered into production almost immediately , on 31 May 1940 . In contrast to the other competing designs , the I - 26 ( Yak - 1 ) and I - 301 ( LaGG - 3 ) , the I - 200 successfully completed the state trials in August on its first attempt . But the trials revealed a number of serious defects , including inadequate visibility when taxiing , poor - quality plexiglas in the canopy obscuring the pilot ' s view , heavy controls , poor longitudinal stability , difficulty in opening canopy , an excessively hot cockpit and a " dangerous propensity to flick from a simple stall into a spin from which it was almost impossible to recover " . A number of improvements were ordered to be made to the aircraft as a result of the deficiencies discovered during the trials , but only a few of them were able to be implemented before production began as the VVS was very anxious to get modern fighters into service . These included an additional air intake on the starboard side of the nose for the oil cooler , rubber sheaths around the fuel tanks to make them self - sealing , two underwing bomb racks each capable of carrying a FAB - 100 bomb , a PBP - 1 gunsight and each ShKAS was given 375 rounds and the UBS 300 rounds . From the ninth aircraft onwards the side - opening canopy was replaced by a rear - sliding canopy that could be jettisoned in flight . On 9 December 1940 the first 100 I - 200s were designated as the MiG - 1 ( after the initials of Mikoyan and Gurevich ) . The improvement process continued throughout the production run , but they weren ' t immediately implemented on the production line , but were instead incorporated in a fourth prototype for evaluation . This aircraft first flew on 29 October 1940 and was a significant improvement over the I - 200s then in production . It passed its State acceptance trials and its improvements were incorporated on the production line from the 101st I - 200 . These were designated as the MiG - 3 on 9 December , although the first production MiG - 3 was not completed until 20 December 1940 . Additional testing . The I - 200 prototypes were used to evaluate a number of proposals . For example the second prototype was fitted with a prototype of the AM - 37 engine and first flew with that engine on 6 January 1941 . It experienced severe vibration problems and , despite efforts to cure the problems , failed during a flight on 7 May , and was destroyed in the ensuing crash . The third prototype was generally used for armament trials , experimenting with RS - 82 rocket s among other weapons . For another trial it was equipped with the experimental MP - 3 autocannon carried underneath the wings in external pods and redesignated as the IP - 201 . The 12 . 7 mm UBS gun was removed for the these tests and the space freed up was used to install an extra fuel tank . Initially the cannon had the low rate of fire of only 300 rounds per minute , but this was soon doubled and the gun was renamed as the MP - 6 . Installation of the guns was difficult , despite the aircraft ' s metal outer wing panels , and the wings deformed when the cannon were first mounted . It made its first , and only , flight on 1 December 1940 carrying two MP - 6s and two 12 . 7 mm AP - 12 . 7 machine guns , but a blocked fuel line caused a forced landing before the guns could be fired . But testing on a variety of other aircraft revealed very unsatisfactory performance by the guns and their development was canceled . The designers were arrested on 15 May 1941 and executed on 28 October 1941 . Operational history . On 3 December 1940 the VVS ordered that the 41st Fighter Regiment ( " isbrebitel ' nyy aviatsionnyy polk " ) , based at the Crimean town of Kacha , was to conduct the operational trials for the I - 200 and that they were to be transferred to the 146th Fighter Regiment at Yevpatoria , also in the Crimea , for pilot training after the conclusion of the trials . By 22 February 1941 89 had been issued to regular fighter units , notably the 89th Fighter Regiment at Kaunas , Lithuania and the 41st Fighter Regiment at Białystok , Poland , both places under Soviet occupation since 1939 – 40 . On 1 June 1941 they were spread out a bit more , with 31 in the Baltic Military District , 37 in the Western Special Military District , one in the Kiev Military District and eight in the Odessa Military District for a total of 77 on hand , of which only 55 were operational . An additional eight MiG - 1s were assigned to the Soviet Navy . However , only four pilots were trained to handle either the MiG - 1 or the MiG - 3 . Little is known of the performance of the MiG - 1 in combat as most were likely destroyed during the opening days of Operation Barbarossa . However , one was still in the inventory of the VVS as late as 1944 when it was recorded as withdrawn that year .