Soviet Fakes, Failures and Copycats. War Secrets - Volume Three: The Soviet Aggressor, November 1936 - June 1941

by Justo Miranda

During the Cold War, the Soviets adopted a policy of maximum secrecy to hide their technical inferiority. Within this concept, in which the mystery and the lack of information about what happened at the other side of the Iron Curtain favored the curiosity of the western public, several journalists working in aircraft publications had the temptation to speculate what could be the next soviet fighter, giving origin to a lucrative business of tricky photographs coming from East Germany that remained active until the early sixties.

When I published "Focke-Wulf Jet Fighters" I was surprised that the section preferred by some readers was the last chapter called "Russian Fakes", just an anecdotal addition with three pages of text and five drawings. On this occasion I thought it might be interesting to offer my readers two different visions of Soviet aeronautical The fantasies that arose from the minds of the cartoonists of the time, and the historical account of Soviet failed prototypes, 'copycat' designs and abandoned projects that actually happened.

The book offers exhaustive coverage on 87 different models and has been profusely illustrated with technical drawings, historical framework and performance details for each real project.

367 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 27, 2021