An amazing MiG-29 photoshoot: air-to-air with the Polish Fulcrums

If you ever wondered how air to air photos which appear in aviation magazines are made, this video may be a clue which would provide an answer.

It was made when Polish MiG-29s did their duty at Baltic Air Policing mission stationing in Lithuania last year, during the PKW Orlik 4 mission.

The photos were taken from C-27 Spartan plane. Note how hard it is for the MiG-29 pilot to keep up with the Spartan.

Mig-29 air-to-air

And here is a part of the final effect:

Mig-29 air-to-air result

The images taken during the photoshoot were published on the Polish Lotnictwo magazine

Photo Credit: Onboard photos of the photo-crew: cpt. Grzegorz Grabarczuk. Air2Air Photos: Bartosz Bera, Maciej Wolański

About Jacek Siminski
Standing contributor for TheAviationist. Aviation photojournalist. Co-Founder of DefensePhoto.com. Expert in linguistics, Cold War discourse, Cold War history and policy and media communications.

4 Comments

  1. I don’t think it was hard at all for the MiG to “keep up” (rather, stay in formation – the MiG is easily faster than a Spartan). See how the MiG suddenly stabilizes with the C-27J in just a couple of seconds at around 0:43. The purpose of the left-and-right swinging must have been to provide a good, dramatic angle to the photographer, and it was quite successful too as you can see from the half-page shot on the title page of the article.

  2. Why is it so difficult to find armed MiG-29’s or Su-27’s photos?

    You generally see them “armed” with dummies at the airshows.
    Here again the MiG shows two humble R-60 missiles and a fuel tank. I guess an F-16 on a similiar air defense duty would show 3 AIM-120, 1 AIM-9 and 2 fuel tanks.

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