OVERVIEW: The F-7A Fishcan is a single seat, single engine, short-range, daytime/clear-weather, Mach 2.0, 2nd generation point defense interceptor. It also had a secondary ground attack capability. 

DETAILS:   The  F-7A Fishcan is a delta wing design, with a circular air intake and an automatically-adjusted moveable intake cone in the nose.  This design gave it excellent climbing characteristics.  However, it limited the F-7 as a dogfighter, as any turning combat led to a rapid loss of speed. Additionally, the small space available for radar limited its ability as a fighter for anything beyond close-range combat.  It was further hampered as a fighter by its short range.  

  Although it was capable of 8 G maneuvering while clean, it was limited to 6 Gs when loaded. The gunsight was incapable of tracking a target maneuvering at more than 3Gs.  The MiG-21 also had maneuvering problems at all altitudes when the airspeed is below 215 KIAS and above 510 KIAS. At low speeds, the aircraft may become uncontrollable, and at high speeds longitudinal stick forces become extremely heavy.  Extreme buffeting made it incapable of reaching Mach 1 below 15,000 feet.  Because of these limitations, the Soviets considered GCI essential to the use of the MIG-21 for effective attack, usually attempting to vector the aircraft to approximately a 20-degree angle from the rear of the target, and making a single high speed pass before disengaging.  

The  F-7A  had some positive combat characteristics.  It's high thrust to weight ratio allowed it to quickly accelerate from low and medium airspeeds,  although this was largely mitigated by very slow engine throttle response.  Although the Fishbed bled energy in a turn, it also had a smaller turn radius than most contemporaneous U.S. fighters.  It was also sturdy, reliable, and easy to maintain, and its unsophisticated design increased its combat survivability.

During China's reverse-engineering of the MiG-23F-13, they also corrected several design flaws.  The fuselage was 7% stronger than MiG-21F-13 in terms of endurance to stress, achieved via more material, but this made the heavier J-7 slightly less maneuverable than MiG-21F-13. The F-7A /J-7 has redesigned fuel tanks and significantly larger drop tanks in order to maintain a more stable center of gravity, improving Longitudinal static stability. Overall, the J-7 showed only minor differences in design and performance from the original MiG-21.

The aircraft was powered by a WP-7 turbojet engine, producing 56 kN or 12,589 lb of thrust.  

The F-7A Fishcan was armed with two rear-aspect only PL-2a/AA-2 ATOLL IR missiles and an internal 30mm cannon and 60 rounds of ammunition.  Its radar was the short-range Type 222 ranging radar to help target its weapons.  


NOTES: IOC: 1970 (approx). The F-7A is an export version of the J-7, and is a copy of the MiG-21F-13 Fishbed C


SOURCE: Mladenov, Alexander. Soviet Cold War Fighters. Fonthill Media, 2017, (Kindel ed., locations 1492; "[1.0] MiG-21 Single-Seat Variants." AirVectors. Accessed January 7, 2022. https://www.airvectors.net/avmig21_1.html#m2. ; "The MiG-21 Page - Performance Data." Imprimante Si Copiatoare, Produse IT: Xerox, Brother, Cisco, Microsoft - Top Edge Engineering. Accessed January 7, 2022. https://www.topedge.com/panels/aircraft/sites/kraft/data.htm. ; Images, Skytamer. "Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21F-13 Fishbed E." Accessed January 8, 2022. https://www.skytamer.com/MiG-21F-13.html ; Pike, John. "MiG-21 / J-7 FISHBED / YF-110." GlobalSecurity.org. Last modified 10, 2021. https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russia/mig-21.htm; DIA, HAVE DOUGHNUT(U)-TACTICAL, FTD-CR-20-13-69 Vol. II (1 August 1969), pgs 1-6 to 1-7. https://theaviationist.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/havedoughnut.pdf
https://www.mig-21-online.de/lsk-lv/mig-21-f-13/; 
"Chengdu (AVIC) J-7 / F-7 (Fishcan)." Military Factory - Global Defense Reference. Accessed January 15, 2022. https://www.militaryfactory.com/aircraft/detail.php?aircraft_id=1052. ;"Chengdu J-7." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Last modified November 24, 2003. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chengdu_J-7. ; Mueller, Holger. "Versions of the MiG-21 - MiG-21.de." MiG-21 / МиГ-21 / MiG-21 Fishbed | Geschichte / Technik / Einsatz | History / Technical Data / In Service | История / Техника / Применение - MiG-21.de. Accessed January 15, 2022. https://www.mig-21.de/english/technicaldataversions.htm.

