The MiG-1/3 family of fighters was built to satisfy a Soviet Air Force requirement for an advanced, fast, high-altitude fighter. Entering service in the spring of 1941, the problematic MiG-1 had its handling issues rectified with the hasty production of the MiG-3. Many of these were destroyed on the ground when the Germans launched Operation Barbarossa. Nevertheless, enough examples survived to allow pilots such as Stepan Suprun and Aleksandr Pokryshkin to claim a number of victories in the type. This book tells the complete story of the men who made ace in the first examples of the famous MiG fighter.

Dmitriy Khazanov is one of Russia's leading experts on the history of Soviet aviation in World War 2. He has written 15 books and a great number of articles, which have been published in Russia, the UK, Germany, Finland, France and Japan. Aleksander Medved is a retired air force colonel who has written 11 books and a number of articles on the history of Soviet and foreign combat aircraft development in World War 2. Khazanov and Medved have previously co-written a handful of monographs on subjects such as the MiG-3 fighter, Pe-2 dive-bomber and Er-2 long-range bomber. Andrey Yurgenson is one of Russia's premier aviation artists, specialising in scale drawings and colour illustrations of Soviet aircraft. He has illustrated numerous articles on the history of Russian aviation in Russian and foreign aviation magazines since the early 1990s, working with Avions, Batailles Aeriennes, Klassiker Fluhthart, Le Fana d'Aviation and Aeroplane. Yurgenson's artwork had also been published in more than 20 books. This is his third volume for Osprey.