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The Last Salute (2026); a love letter to the MiG-21 – Heartfelt tribute
7–10 minutes
Clickable links in red
Subject: The MiG-21’s retirement from the Indian Air Force in September 26, 2025
Its not every day that such a momentous and truly historic event happens and is celebrated publicly. There have been many planes before in the Indian Air Force/ Armed Forces history but none of them have been the subject of a documentary and that too by Netflix. Hunter, Sukhoi Su7, Canberra, Sea Hawk, Sea Harrier and many more were retired in ceremonies where only the service personnel were present . Since the giant Tupolev Tu-142 was replaced by the Boeing P-8I , it was a strictly Indian Navy event with very few outsiders allowed and there are very few clips available .
But none of them are subject of a full length movie/ documentary.
Background history of the MiG-21: The Mikoyan Gurevich (the name of the two lead designers of the MiG design bureau) MiG-21 was a product of the late 1950s thinking of catching high flying (30,000 feet + ) American bombers and shooting them down. Since it was all a matter of time to intercept, the plane had to be fast , fast , fast. Thus came the delta wing design which , as with any design, has both advantages and disadvantages; the main disadvantage were the high speeds of takeoff and landing. But it did the job and quickly at that. The 1950s thinking was that a plane could fire missiles at stand off ranges and shoot down an intruding bomber. It was NOT designed to be a dogfighter that would go against another fighter. The Americans too had similar delta wing designs for the US Air Force, the Convair F-102 Delta Dagger and the Convair F-106 Delta Dart, both of which served – unsurprisingly – as pure interceptors, intercepting Soviet Tu95 bombers which ‘tickled’ American radars into operation, thus enabling them to record the radar signature for future (conflicts , if that happened). The French delta design was the famous Mirage III which found fame against MiGs in the Middle East Wars (see below).
Operation Diamond and bad reputation: The Americans badly wanted a MiG-21 in their kitty so that they could study its weaknesses and take suitable counter measures. They sent the word out and lo and behold, they had a MiG-21 with them. Israel’s Mossad’s Operation Diamond persuaded an Iraqi Christian pilot to defect to Israel, in return for asylum for him and his family . The full details are available at this wiki link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Diamond. Steal the Sky is a 1988 film on this operation , though it shows a MiG-17 instead of a MiG-21 .
The Israelis flew the plane on their Independence Day , painting it in a primal red color and giving it a cheeky and infamous serial number ,007. (Wiki link shows the same picture). The Israelis and Americans dismissed the plane as a supersonic sports car and thanks to “bad handling” by the Arab pilots during the 1967 Six Day war, shot down many in air to air combat, with many further destroyed in the waves of attacks on airfields. (Those interested can check out videos on this topic by a You Tuber Showtime 112). It is however the post WW2 combat aircraft that was the most manufactured at 10,000+ units. Here’s a link from April 2026 that mentions some of these facts https://migflug.com/afterburner/the-mig-21-10000-built-60-countries-still-flying/
The US secret program Constant Peg: Despite their dismissal of the MiG-21 as a supersonic sports car, such was the US obsession with MiGs that they actually used real MiGs in a secret program called Constant Peg ; This was where MiG-15s, MiG-17s, MiG-19s, MiG-21s were actually bought secretly from various countries and used to train American fighter pilots. If that sounds weird and unbelievable, the above link on Constant Peg and the below photos of MiG-21s in US Air Force markings, in formation with US Navy F-14s should disprove this (and these pics are at least 15 – 20 years old._
India’s use: India actually wanted the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter . often dubbed missile with a man , due to its sleek design, but thanks to Cold War politics, ended up buying the MiG-21. There were just 10 MiG-21s in the 1965 war , 3 of which were destroyed on the ground by Pakistani attacks. Mostly they ended up doing CAP (Combat Air Patrol) – wasteful but essential duty of orbiting over a select area , ready to shoot down any intruding enemy planes. By the 1971 war, license manufacturing of the MiG-21 was well under way and it proved its worth very well , though sadly this was not trumpeted from the rooftops unlike Pakistan, which continued to share fabricated stories of Indian planes being shot down in droves.
MiG-21 in Indian Air Force combat use: The moment of truth arrived in the 1971 war in the Jamnagar sector when two MiG-21s met its contemporary adversary, the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter. The MiG-21s fired their missiles which missed , since most first generation air to air missiles were notoriously prone to failure. Though the Russians had supplied some gun packs and refused to take any more ownership saying that the MiG-21 was not a gunfighter, the Indian Air Force proved that the spirit of “positive jugaad” prevailed, resulting in shooting down the intruding F-104 off the Jamnagar coast, with guns. Here’s an excellent link from the superb Website on Indian Armed Forces Bharat-Rakshak . Sadly this incident is NOT COVERED in detail in this documentary which gives more focus on the Eastern Sector, where the MiG-21s were mostly used for ground attacks. It was a MiG-21 bombing attack that finally persuaded the Governor of East Pakistan to resign and within a day, the Pakistani Army surrendered.
By the time of the 1999 Kargil war, the IAF was operating the last variant of the MiG-21, the MiG-21 bis. While many aircraft types were involved in Operation Safed Sagar, the MiG-21 once again proved that it was a true multi role aircraft as it did photo recce, ground attack and CAP.
In the Balakot operations, a “2nd generation” MiG-21 supposedly shot down a “4th generation” F-16 and this is shown in the documentary as “Falcon Slayer”. Like all Indo-Pak war claims, this one is also highly debatable, as each side gives contradictory information about what happened. Since the truth about the 1965 and 1971 Indo Pak wars are available only now, after 50 to 60 years, we suppose we will have have to wait another 50 years for the truth to emerge about the claim of a F-16 shoot down by a MiG-21 :)
As an aside. it is worth mentioning that during the Vietnam war, the USAF F-4 Phantom pilots often complained that they didn’t get an opportunity to dogfight the MiG-21 , despite the F-4’s much “superior” technology and the MiG-21’s “inferior technology”. One pilot supposedly said “the Vietnamese MiG-21s could come screaming out of the sun, make a firing pass, disengage and vanish”. Only fools would argue that this was “not right”; tactically it was the perfect thing to do since the Vietnamese had very limited number of MiGs. (During WW2, many German aces who had more than 200 kills used the same tactic of one firing pass and then scoot away, most notably ace of aces Erich Hartmann, with 352 air to air kills). The Vietnamese MiGs however fell prey to a ruse codenamed Operation Bolo, where the MiG-21s were lured into the air combat by F-4 Phantoms mimicking signals, flight paths, code names of the F-105 bombers and were shot down.
Bad reputation : This is tackled in some length in the documentary. After the end of the Cold war and the breakup of the Soviet Union, with many factories in the newly independent republics, a desperately broke Russia demanded hard cash for the spares at four or even five times the going price. Accordingly , alternative sources from the former Eastern Bloc countries and the new republics, were thought to be a lucrative source for spares. Some reports suggest that these spares were often defective and of low quality, resulting in the MiG-21’s reputation in the Indian press and public consciousness, as flying coffins/ widow maker, and so on. Just one such link (among many) is included here https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/india-buying-faulty-mig-parts-russia/articleshow/20395007.cms This aspect, namely the MiG-21 is NOT a flying coffin, is covered in depth in the documentary, with many veteran officers pooh poohing the irresponsible press reports. As with most such things the truth lies somewhere between these two extremes. Rang de Basanti , the hit 2006 film , also made it, the core idea of the story since the somewhat unfocused, “vagabond” characters band together, to ‘avenge’ the death of their MiG-21 pilot friend, who loses his life due to “corruption in the system of buying low quality spares”.
Except for Operation Diamond, the 1971 combat operations, Vietnamese use, many of the above mentioned facts are covered well in-depth in the documentary. The picture that emerges is of a plane, a powerful beast, that once tamed , can be and proved to be a benign plane . One of its champions Air Commodore (Retd.) S.S.Tyagi who logged a record 4003 hours on the MiG-21, is almost in tears when he says he would love to fly the plane again. Here’s a lovely tribute to both the man and the plane in Anchit Gupta’s superb page on the Indian Air Force
Verdict : Military nerds, like yours truly, simply love this film as its one of the rare Indian documentaries WITHOUT any jingoism and shows the man-machine interactions in detail than any jingoistic trumpeting However even the layman can watch it as most of the talking is done by the people who flew and maintained it ,both air and ground crew, which shows a picture of their enduring love for a much maligned beast of warplane.
Total – 5 out of 5
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