Thread by @MikeBlack114

Visiting @nuclearmuseum (which is very cool btw, if you're in ABQ highly encourage a visit) and I spot a Mig-21...any time you see a MiG in a US museum decent chance it has an interesting history, and this one was no exception, 1/x (CC @NuclearAnthro )

So here's the MiG in question. Appears to be a bog standard MiG-21F-13: pitot tube mounted under intake vs over and lack of gun on port side are giveaways for it being a F-13 variant, but let's look a bit closer

Notice the stenciled writing (we'll come back to the Pentagon shaped marking above it)...Type 4000 is a type of storage (least preserving) at AMARG (the Boneyard), so this plane was in DoD service at some point, as the Museum alluded to when they got it: kafbnucleus.com/news/features/…

But the rest of the history was scarce, as is typical with ex-USAF MiGs

Clue 1 is the roundel on the wing. That's Hungarian AF during the Cold War. The HAF operated F-13s from the late '60s through 1980

Interestingly someone has appeared to "red out" the tail roundel

Clue 2 is this marking on the wing

"USAF SYSCOM" is presumably a reference to AF Systems Command, one of the forerunners to today's AFMC. In this context, AFSC was responsible for running Foreign Materiel Exploitation programs

FME is the effort focused on technical exploitation of "red" assets...how fast, how maneuverable, how capable is the radar, etc. This is in contrast to Aggressor programs like the 4477th TES, which flew red aircraft as red air in dynamic employment

Historically FME has gotten first crack at acquired systems, with aggressor-type efforts following, although there has been some back and forth (see Steve Davies's excellent book "Red Eagles" for more). That back and forth leads us to the last clue

This emblem is painted on the nose of the Museum's MiG. It is also seen on the nose of 'Red 49,' a MiG-23 that was passed back and forth between the FME "Red Hats" operating out of Groom Lake and the 4477th TES aggressors operating out of Tonopah

I'm in transit so I can't reference Davies's book or Gail Peck's, but IIRC that was an emblem of the Red Eagles' maintenance folks

So it seems probable that this aircraft was flown by the Red Eagles. That's interesting because I'm not aware of any Hungarian acft being used

There's also this emblem painted on the other side of the tail

I'm not familiar with it off-hand (will have to do digging later) but the chess knight is often used in USAF intelligence heraldry, so possible that is the emblem of some sort of FME intel unit

So BL: this aircraft was 'acquired' by the USAF from the Hungarian AF sometime prior to '92 (when AFSC merged w/AFLC to form AFMC) and spent time in the Nevada desert NW of Vegas doing interesting things, probably both doing FME as well as potentially being a Red Eagles tail

Not sure if @NuclearAnthro is in touch with the folks doing the restoration but y'all have a very interesting aircraft on your hands..feel free to pass any of this onto them if they'd be interested

I'll look in the books once I get settled to confirm what that Pentagon emblem is