Polikarpov I-16. Decent enough, or just crap ?

Obsolete by USAAC standards, yes..but definetly not by world standards. A version designated Martin 139 was released for export by the State Dept. in 1936 .It outperformed the Ju-86 and a twin-engined variant of the SM79 in a bomber contest organized by the Argentine govt in 1936 and as a result, it was ordered by both the Argentine Army and Naval Air Arms, it was exported to China, Siam (which employed them against the French in 1941!) and Turkey. and as indicated, selected for production in Spain for the Spanish AF . The Netherlands ordered about 166 of various versions, beginning with the 139WH-1 to protect the Netherlands East Indies-and these saw combat against the Japanese in 1941...By the way, a few ex-USAAC were transfered to the fledgling Phillipine Air Force in 1941...along with some totally outdated Boeing P-26As...

 

Some popular legens realy p&%$# me off. One of them is about I-16.
Cantrary to popular belief I-16 Ishak ( donky) was not as outdated as it is belived and was loved by soviet pilots. I-16 was a first plane that was serialy equiped with cannon ammament( Type 12). There were few WW 1 aircraft but they were more or less experimental. Same coud be said for rocket projectiles. Soviets were first to use rockets on massive scale as air to ground and air to air weapon.
Soviets tested their armmament in Spain, China ( 1937-39), Lake Khasan incident ( near Vladivostok 1938) and Khalkin Gol incident (Mongolia 1939 ). I-16 was sloted for replacment becouse of new Japanese airplanes that were encountered in China, but was still regarded as useful aircraft.
I-16 was a good preformer even in 1941. If you read interview by N.G.Golodnikov ( 2.GIAP VVS SF - P-39 ace). He started operational flying in march 1942 on I-16. He stated that I-16 type 29 ( 2 x ShKAS 7,62mm + 1 x UBS 12,7mm) was faster, more manuvreble, and had beter climb rate than Bf-109E-4/7 ( up to 3000m). Slower type 28 was also good plane, it mounted two ShVAK 20mm guns and two 7,62mm ShKAS machine guns ( rate of fire 1800 r/min)

Interview with Nikolai Gerasimovich Golodnikov Major-General (ret.)
http://lend-lease.airforce.ru/english/articles/golodnikov/index.htm

Same bad opinion could be given for P-39 Airacobra. US pilots disliked them ( zeros kicked their ass in New Guinea), RAF passed them on to Soviets at first opurtunity but Russians absoloutly LOVED them. It's all in who & how uses the equipment .

 

Hi TISO, welcome to the forum!

Good points above - on an Aeroplane Forum I belong to, they had a similar 'no the I-16 is not rubbish' topic.

Try in the middle of here (an interesting discussion anyway) http://www.tgplanes.com/Public/snitz/to ... PIC_ID=392

Or http://www.tgplanes.com/Public/snitz/to ... PIC_ID=401 for an interesting comparison...

 

Good sites mein general. 8)

 

An I-16 *faster* than an Me 109E? I find that just a bit hard to believe, given the performance stats I've seen about both types. Can you show some proof of this statement?

 

As i wrote read all about it ( including on reliability of stats) in the interiew.

Speed depended on the type. Types 24,28,29 had M-63 engine ( much uprated and supercharged russian version of Cyclone). Type 29 was lighter, but also lightly armed.
When soviet pilots first encountered 109s (B,C and D) in Spain they got wery dimunative opinion about them. When they managed to buy few 109Es (1939) they developed type 29 as a stop gap mesure.

About stats. Tests are usualy conducted in ideal conditions. One has to take into account that combat conditios are far from ideal. Engines get worn out, field modifications are made ( like bomb carrying equipment) and pilots don't tend to risk damage to the engine (burnout) and airframe in dogfight over enemy territory. For comparison one pilot managed to outturn Yak-3 with MiG-3 in mock dogfight, but MiG was a writeoff. According to stats that is impossible, but it was done.

 

Impressive. Turning a MiG-3 inside of a Yak-3 is indeed quite an accomplishment, especially since the MiG was designed and usually used as a high altitude interceptor.

 

However you look at it, the plane had formidable armament for its time: 2x20mm + 2 x 7,62mm. I am not sure if I remember properly, but some even had a 40mm gun.

"Under the lash or not, Soviet aviation made great strides throughout the decade. By the mid-1930s, the industry employed 350,000 workers, who labored in three shifts around the clock. "The impression is that with 10 times as many personnel employed as the French, the Soviet industry is producing 20 times as many aircraft," wrote Louis Charles Breguet, a French aircraft maker who toured the Soviet Union in 1936."
With all this Stalin was all the time trying to be ready for world war - to spread revolution.
Happily, he didn´t manage to fully equip with new generation Yaks, Laggs and Migs when time came. But, if anything, this one "Mushka" shows that the industrial and design basis was sound in USSR.

One can compare the fate of this funny Bee with the Polish PZL-11c, also a beauty of its time, which, however was built in a sane country where one did not expect to go to Gulag having come 5 minutes late for work.

There was incomparably fewer PZLs, however, the pilots of Polish AF were incomparably better trained than the Russians (WHY???) and were able to shoot quite a number Bf109s in unequal fight.

Two Slavic coutries with such different mentalities and political systems. Two, completely different worlds....

 

Ricky, remember when I told you about that Stalin gave Yakovlev just 3 months to put to mass production his Yak. And he answered: "Comrade stalin! Americans use at least 1 year to develop a fighter!!!!"
And Stalin answered : "Have you maybe become American, comrade Yakovlev?"

This is from Yak factories site:
"In June 1940 the Soviet government ordered to the factory to set up a mass production of Yak-1 fighters designed by young Alexander Yakovlev. Within the very tight timeframe - the factory was given only three months to master the serial production of the new fighters - Saratov aircraft builders completed three Yak-1 airplanes that took off for the first time in the month of October."

He always knew what he was doing. He was also called "The Genious of All Times and Nations". Not bad for a gangster, whose bank robbery in Tiflis is being used by police schools all over the world as a classic example of good planning.