Pashinin I-21

History

At one point Mikhail Pashinin was employed by the Polikarpov Aircraft Company, which helped him as he tried to develop his I-21 fighter jet - a brand new, state-of-the-art The monoplane to replace the aging Polikarpov I-16 line was supposed to be in service with the Soviet Air Force. Passionate about applying lessons learned from the Soviet Union's involvement in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and the conflict with the Japanese, Pashinen produced an elegant product with good overall performance.

However, the I-21 had few advantages over competing designs from Mikoyan-Gurevich and Yakovlevonly three airworthy prototypes remained in the program.

Externally, the I-21 featured a sleek design and aerodynamically refined airframe. The cockpit is located aft of the midship, the wing main aircraft is located forward of the cockpit and the sides of the fuselage are lower.

The nose contains the engine unit, which drives a conventional three-bladed propeller. The rear wing consists of a vertical fin with the horizontal plane set low. For ground operation, a rear tow landing gear (retractable) is provided.

The canopy is framed and usually gives a reasonable view of what's going on around the plane, but its position too far back means that the wing-main plane and long nose get in the way of most of what's going on front and rear.

Internally, the aircraft is constructed of welded steel pipe (front fuselage) and wood (rear fuselage). The wings are metal with a plywood skin. Power will come from the Klimov M-107 inline-piston engine under development, which is expected to deliver the required performance.

Proposed weapons are 1 x 20mm ShVAK or 1 x 23mm BT-23 nose autocannon, firing through the propeller hub, and 2 x 7.62mm ShKAS machine guns, one per wing element. This provides good firepower against contemporary enemy aircraft types - especially the 23mm gun buried in the engine.

Before its maiden flight, it became clear that the M-107 inline would not be available, as it encountered its own development problems. This forced the use of the 1,050-horsepower Klimov M-105P V12.

The maiden flight of the first prototype took place on May 18, 1940, just after the Soviet Union ended its "Winter War" with neighboring Finland in March. Further inspection of the aircraft revealed insufficient stability, which led to modifications to the wings of the second prototype.

Handling issues persisted, leading to the refinement of a third prototype in January 1941, this example of a further improved wing main aircraft. The main plane now has a slight flare mid-span and is given a hint of "clipping", but this makes little improvement to the overall design.

While the prototype's straight-line performance was promising, unresolved issues persisted, eventually leading to the abandonment of the five-person pre-production order -- leaving only the three prototypes mentioned above. Soviet authorities opted for competing designs and left the I-21 to history.

The I-21 designation was formerly used by Ilyushin TsKB-32, which may cause confusion.

Specification

Basic

Production

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Dimensions

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Performance

Performance

Armor

Changes