MiG-29: Russia’s Legendary Air Superiority, and Multi-Role Fighter, 1977 to the Present, Andy Gröning, 2018, ISBN 978-0-7643-5521-9, 224 pp

Andy Gröning worked the technical side of the MiG-29 for much of his career and his book is absolutely filled with what he has learned and researched. His skilled intellect defines this unique book and his love for the aircraft is evidenced throughout the book as he notes the various advantages and accepts the disadvantages in a frank and honest light. His friends also aided in completing this tremendous work about Russia’s potent light fighter (the Su-27 being the heavy one) as well as its ultimate evolution into the MiG-35—the differences and improvements of which Gröning expertly describes both in the text and the captions.

MiG-29: Russia’s Legendary Air Superiority, and Multi-Role Fighter, 1977 to the Present by Andy Gröning (front cover)

The captions are as informative as the images are remarkably expert. The images in fact are tremendously marvellous, seemingly showing the MiG-29 in every sort of deployment, country of service and paint scheme. Gröning expertly details the systems, subsystems, sensor systems and weapons of the MiG-29. MiG-29: Russia’s Legendary Air Superiority, and Multi-role Fighter, 1977 to the Present is a page turner all but guaranteed to have the reader late or tired for work as it that difficult to put down. The technical information provided is intimate, the sort that experienced maintenance people share over coffee and not just the general statistics that are found in the brochures or Wikipedia.

The photos and data tables are wonderfully and greedily taken in as each page is turned in this large format, full colour, high gloss book. Readers will not learn how to fly the MiG-29’s various models but they will learn about their capabilities, deployments and strategies behind them, the variety of looks (including several unique paint schemes honouring units, or events, and they are visually striking), which countries use them and how many—as well as the test pilots of the MiG-29 program (one of the book’s many unique insights).


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