China’s Fighter for the World Volume 2: The F-7/Ft-7 Family: Equipment & World-Wide Service

Charts the F-7’s evolution from MiG-21 derivative to global export success across multiple air forces.

When founded in 1949, the People’s Republic of China was a backward agricultural state with no industrial base to speak of and no armaments industry of its own. From the very beginning, Mao Zedong, the founder of the state, endeavoured to develop his own modern defence industry. One of the most successful export products of this modernisation was the F-7, a Chinese derivative of the Soviet MiG-21.

Initially working from component knock-down kits supplied by the USSR, the Chinese aircraft industry progressed from simple assembly, to copies of the MiG-21, through to domestic versions (the J-7) and export versions (the F-7 and two-seater FT-7). Constantly striving to introduce improvements and refinements, the F-7 would become a great export success for the People’s Republic, with modernised and upgraded variants still in service across the world to this day.

Volume 2 of China’s Fighter for the World tells the story of F-7’s commercial success over the decades. It covers the service of the F/FT-7 aircraft family with air forces on four continents. Each chapter, by user country, presents the available information, consisting of a brief history, the process and scope of procurement, deployment history, a list of losses and an outlook. Appendices provide an overview of the history of the aircraft factories involved in the production of the F/FT-7 and list known construction numbers and the underlying allocation scheme. This volume includes over 120 full-colour photographs and 21 specially commissioned full colour profile artworks.