MiG-15 Tail Design influenced by Rosenberg Spy Ring's espionage products?

[Clioman]

Interesting article in the March 28 edition of the Weekly Standard on the web at
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/sobell-confession_554817.html
It's a revisit of the case against Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, executed in 1953 for nuclear weapons espionage, but focusing on other efforts they and fellow co-conspirators made to gather classified U.S. non-nuclear technical information for the Soviet Union.

In a December 2010 interview, spy ring member Martin Sobel (released from prison in 1969 and now 94 years old) acknowledged that on one particular occasion he and three others microfilmed 1,885 pages of documents "borrowed" by fellow agent (and NACA employee) William Perl from the safe of Perl's mentor, Theodore von Karmen, over the weekend of July 4th, 1948. At the time, von Karmen was a member of the USAF Scientific Advisory Board, and had access to the highest levels of USAF-sponsored research. Specific information mentioned in the article included wind tunnel data on the Douglas D-558 research aircraft, comparisons of jet-powered helicopters versus piston-powered helicopters, and the effort to design an atom-powered airplane (Project Lexington).

The most interesting claim in the article, though, was the allegation by an unnamed "top Air Force expert on aerodynamics" that NACA data stolen at some point by Perl had influenced the tail design of the MiG-15, along with "another anti-turbulence feature" used by that aircraft. This was apparently mentioned in a 1953 news article that also quoted NACA director Hugh Dryden as saying that Perl "was in a position to supply information which could fill out a bigger picture of a whole field of information."

The MiG-15 first flew in 1947, but Perl's teachery had apparently been going on for a period of years. So, my question for the group is, given subsequent years of scholarship viz. the MiG-15's development, just how plausible might this seem to be?

 

[overscan (PaulMM)]

I don't think this is very likely. Of course, the USSR was an avid consumer of NASA reports - in fact Sukhoi tended to rely on them more than TsAGI reports later on - but in 1946-1947 the USA didn't really have any kind of lead on fast jet technologies which Russia could steal. Rather, Russia and the USA each had their respective Germans and German technology to exploit.

 

[sienar]

Maybe the soviets found it cheaper to just steal the evaluations of German tech done by the US.

And I'm guessing that the other anti-turbulence device must be the wing fences?

 

[overscan (PaulMM)]

Wing fences were patented by Wolfgang Liebe in 1938 after testing on the Bf 109 (not used in production) I believe. So they certainly weren't a US innovation.

The Lavochkin 160 was the first aircraft to mount the TsAGI-recommended 35 deg sweep plus 2 fences, followed by the MiG-15 and the Yak-30. The fences were added after wind tunnel testing; there is no evidence I am aware they were following US research in this area. NACA reports in this time frame are all about slats, slots, and suction to control spanwise flow and boundary layers.

The next generation (e.g. MiG-17, Yak-50, Lavochkin La-168) used 45 deg plus 3 fences, again from TsAGI recommendation after wind tunnel testing.

With regard to the tail - its not similar to any production US aircraft I can think of , and Mikoyan had already used a low tail (MiG-9) and a T tail (I-270) so the mid-high tail design seems a sensible evolution without positing US influence.

 

[Orionblamblam]

A possibility is that the NACA was studying Concept X, data on Concept X was stolen, and then a few years later Concept X showed up on the MiG 15. If you are responsible for stealing Concept X, you might well think that is your doing... when in fact, the Soviets were already working on Concept X independently.

 

[Clioman]

That seems like a plausible chain of events, Scott, but I got the impression from the article that the MiG-15 tail claim was made in the early 1950s by a US aerodynamicist, not one of the spies. But you're right: in 1945-47, labs on both sides of the Iron Curtain were certainly working very hard at digesting German aerodynamic data, applying it to current projects, and pursing new avenues that it suggested. And Overscan's point is also well-taken, and very relevant.

On the other hand, at least in the case of nuclear weapons development, senior soviet designers, e.g. Kurchatov, later acknowledged that they had benefitted from info provided via espionage, if only because it confirmed their own work/approach, or because it allowed them to avoid going down paths that had already been explored by other researchers and found wanting. In other words, it saved the Soviet state both time and money. As to the MiG-15 tail, I suppose that the only way for this to be proven one way or another would be for somebody to find the ghosts of Mikoyan and Gurevich and ask them...