Imagine having to fly and maintain Soviet MiG fighters without tech data and spare parts.

That was the challenge airmen assigned to the 4477th Test and Evaluation Squadron faced for 12 years when the unit’s secret assignment was to fly about two dozen MiG fighters.

This week, the Air Force began allowing former 4477th squadron members to talk about their experiences. Air Force Times interviewed three members for a story appearing in the Nov. 27 edition of the paper, on newsstands Monday.

The squadron was based at an airfield in the midst of southern Nevada’s isolated Tonopah Test Range, the airmen said.

About 220 airmen and 25 MiGs were assigned to the squadron. Most of the airmen were either senior non-commissioned officers or veteran pilots who had flown as aggressors or weapons school instructors. There were also Navy and Marine Corps pilots.

The squadron’s main mission was to fly against units deployed to Nellis Air Force Base, Nev. The deployed pilots would spend two weeks learning how MiG-17s, 21s and 23s flew and fought.

The MiG pilots would fly as many as three sorties a day with most flights lasting less than an hour.

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