The Indian Air Force’s (IAF) nostalgia for the imminently retiring Soviet-era MiG-21 ground-attack fighters – wryly nicknamed the ‘Flying Coffin’ and ‘Widow Maker’ – perpetuates a romanticism that obscures the platform's grim legacy of frequent crashes, in which scores of pilots and civilians had, over decades, died.

In the run-up to the phasing out of the IAF’s last two MiG-21 ‘Bis’ squadrons on September 26 in Chandigarh, glamorised media narratives and macho veteran recollections of the fighter’s derring-do over 62 years, had transformed the outdated platform into a myth-laden symbol of valour and endurance. Such tributes also propagated a ‘halo effect’ around the fighter, glossing over its dismal safety record and the tragic human cost of keeping it operational, well past its prime.

Even highly symbolic farewell gestures – such as Air Chief Marshal A.P. Singh’s final sortie in a single-seat MiG-21 on Monday, dramatically escorted by a female fighter pilot in a similar fighter, too, have been framed as proud tributes to the aircraft’s heritage and valour.

Yet, in such celebratory narratives, the fighter’s inherent risks are hastily airbrushed, relegated to a footnote, with its catastrophic accident record glossed over by fighter jocks. Instead, blame for this and the unfortunate earlier-mentioned sobriquets attached to the MiG-21 as a perilous platform have been deflected by IAF veterans onto an ‘uninformed’ or ‘ignorant’ media. It’s almost as if critical scrutiny of the MiG-21’s accident-prone performance over six decades was the problem, rather than the ageing aircraft itself.

However, behind the MiG-21’s legendary status lies a stark reality: nearly 45%, or some 400 of the 874 fighter type, inducted since 1963 – mostly licence-built by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited in Bangalore – were lost in accidents, claiming the lives of over 170 pilots and around 40 civilians on the ground.

What is also often obscured in these sentimentalised MiG-21 accounts is that this fighter's remarkable longevity was driven less by choice than by compulsion. Chronic delays in replacement programmes, funding shortfalls and bureaucratic inertia left the IAF with little alternative but to persist with MiG-21’s, long after their expiry date had elapsed.

After entering IAF service in 1963, the MiG-21s were never expected to dominate the forces' frontline combat line for so long; at best, it was designed to serve for two or three decades, like most fighters of its generation. But instead, it remained in service for 62 years and through the 1980s and 1990s, comprised nearly 60% of the IAF's fighter squadrons – an extraordinary level of dependence that reflected institutional compulsions rather than deliberate choice.

The MiG-21s extended tenure, enabled by inimitable ‘desi jugaad’ or locally improvised engineering fixes, was driven entirely by systemic failures in defence planning, procurement processes and geopolitical constraints. These factors collectively presented the IAF with an operational fait accompli of economically extending the MiG-21’s total technical life (TTL) or maximum lifespan, by several decades. Thus, what had been conceived as a limited-term platform, had ended up being recast as a combat cornerstone, well into the 21st century.

Earlier, in the mid-1990s, the MiG-21 had begun showing its age.

By then, most air forces worldwide – including those of the Soviet Union – had retired, or were phasing out their MiG-21s-over 12,000 built in all-but unable to secure timely replacements, the IAF had little option but to continue flogging them. The indigenous Light Combat Aircraft (LCA), later christened Tejas, launched in 1981, was hobbled by shifting design goals, inadequate engine capability, and bureaucratic apathy. Intended for induction in the 1990s, its timelines had slipped by decades, leaving the IAF shackled to its hoary MiG-21 fleet.

Import alternatives were equally unviable, with little money to spare. In the meantime, French Mirage-2000Hs and Russian MiG-29 inductions into the IAF in the 1980s had added firepower to the forces combat fleet, but not the numbers needed to replace hundreds of MiG-21s. Widespread sanctions after India’s 1998 nuclear tests further choked access to Western platforms and technology and also stalled the development of the LCA, that conducted its first test flight in 2001, exactly two decades after its development was launched.

Therefore, with fighter squadron strength dwindling in a hostile neighbourhood, the IAF had no choice but to extend the MiG-21’s TTL. The late 1990s MiG-21 ‘Bison’ jugaad upgrade – new radar, avionics and missiles – referred to above, bought time, but could not mask the fighter's inherent flaws: ageing design and airframes, punishing maintenance, and above all, a fatal safety record.

Even some senior IAF veterans – declining to be named amidst the unquestioning MiG-21 adulation – grudgingly conceded that this fighter type endured in service, not for its merit, but for lack of alternatives. “What began as a time-bound fighter in the Sixties, became a decades-long bridge between the IAF’s needs and India’s inability to meet them,” said a decorated veteran. The IAF had no viable alternative at the time but to keep the MiG-21s in service, he added.

Nevertheless, it was not as if the issue of retiring MiG-21s was never raised.

Air Chief Marshals Denis La Fontaine (1985-88), Nirmal Chandra Suri, S.K. Kaul and Fali Major had all announced MiG-21 phase-out plans, but each deadline slipped as replacement programmes stalled and operational compulsions forced repeated extensions of the legacy fighters service life.

The most visible episode of the MiG-21s' retirement emerged during ACM N.A.K. Browne’s tenure, when he firmly declared that the fighters' phasing out would begin from 2017. Expectedly, that deadline too slipped, once again leaving the MiG-21 holding the combat line.

Over time, nostalgia has blurred this reality and uncritical praise of the MiG-21 risks not only subjectively distorts its history but also masks the wider institutional failures of the IAF and the Ministry of Defence as a triumphant tale of endurance. Romanticising the platform is just another step away.

And, as the MiG-21 takes its final bow at Chandigarh next month, a surge of further sentiment is both inevitable and understandable. Yet such wistfulness must not eclipse the hard truths surrounding this Cold War-era fighter, lest memory harden smugly into comforting myth.

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