MiG-17F - Egypt - 1973
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Bernhard PetheEine gute Recherche, ist schon der halbe Weg zum Erfolg. Ich schau da mal weiter zu.
Album info
My topic is the Egyptian MiG-17F number 2782 as photographed in 1972 (see album, photograph #3) and likely a participant in the October War (1973)
By the time the Suez Crisis started (1956), Egypt already had converted a small number of pilots to the new MiG-17Fs, which subsequently performed several combat missions during the war.
The Six Day War (1967) brought massive losses to the Egyptian MiG-17 fleet, with a total of 44 MiG-17Fs and PFs being completely written off according to official Egyptian archives. Nevertheless, the MiG-17s were still very active during the Six Day War with a total of 49 combat sorties. While all Soviet-made aircraft operated by the EAF during the Six Day War (June 1967) had no camouflage painting at all, all of these received camouflage painting immediately after.
One of the famous EAF camouflage patterns was the "Nile Camouflage", which I also briefly described in one of my MiG-21MF projects (check this link: MiG-21MF - Egypt - Nile Camouflage - 1973 | Album by Redicus (1:72)). While there were also a few exceptions, the vast majority of Egyptian MiG-17s have had the Nile Camouflage by 1973.
As the October War (1973) commenced, the MiG-17s together with the Su-7s and Su-20s were the main ground attack aircraft of the EAF, with the MiG-17s being vastly more numerous. While it is certain that Egypt (UARAF) had no MiG-19s in service any more after 1970, the number of available MiG-17s is very difficult to estimate. An indirect estimate converges to approximately 100 machines operational by October 1973 (according to "Arab MiGs", Volume 5, by T. Cooper, D. Nicolle).
Egypt never disclossed even after 50 years a precise number of EAF losses during the October War. President Anwar Sadat once explained that the EAF had lost 120 aircraft during the war, while US and Israeli sources are counting between 230 and 250 losses for the Egyptian, Algerian and Iraqi air forces together. Considering that Algeria lost 2 aircraft and Iraq 15, one can conclude that the EAF lost over 220 aircraft according to US and Israeli numbers, out of which the vast majority were MiG-17s and MiG-21s. Considering this and the individual recollections and stories from Egyptian pilots (as for instance in "Arab MiGs, Volume 5" and "..., Volume 6") it is therefore quite likely that the Egyptian MiG-17 fleet was signifficantly diminished after October 1973.
After the October War, Egypt received close to no replacements from the USSR for its very high aircraft losses. The complex nature of events and consequences of the war have left Egypt in front of ever colder ties with the USSR and more in dialog with Israel and the USA. Once the Camp David peace deal with Israel was achieved (1979), Egypt had already reoriented itself geopolitically. The surviving MiG-17s were retired from EAF service in 1982 and slowly replaced in their ground attack role by F-4E Phantoms (received from the US as a reward for the peace treaty, see also my other project: F-4E - Iran - 1980 | Project by Redicus (1:72)).
