Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15UTI
The two-seat trainer that taught a generation of Eastern-bloc jet pilots — and the MiG-15 most often still flying · In production 1950–1959 (USSR)
The MiG-15UTI added a second, instructor's cockpit behind the pilot under a long canopy and reduced the armament to a single 12.7 mm machine gun. The Soviet Union built 3,434 two-seaters, Czechoslovakia more than 2,000 as the CS-102, Poland converted and built them as the SBLim-1 (RD-45 engine) and SBLim-2 (VK-1), and China produced the JJ-2.
Because it was the standard conversion trainer for the MiG-15 fleets, the UTI stayed in service long after the single-seat fighter; Finland used it alongside the MiG-15bis, and North Korea still operates the MiG-15 as an advanced trainer. One version, the UTI MiG-15P, was fitted with the RP-1 Izumrud radar and a single 12.7 mm UBK-E gun.
On 27 March 1968 cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin and his instructor Vladimir Seryogin were killed in the crash of a MiG-15UTI during a training flight. Today ex-Polish SBLim-2s and Czech CS-102s are the backbone of the privately flown MiG-15 fleet in Europe, the United States and Australia.
