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J-6 (Jian-6 Fighter aircraft 6) - Development

The original design of the J-6 supersonic fighter built by the Shenyang Aircraft Factory in March, 1958 was the Soviet MiG-19. The first version produced at the Shenyang Aircraft Factory was the MiG-19P all-weather fighter. What was different from the production of the J-5 was that all the technical documents for the manufacturing were prepared and all the production tooling was designed and manufactured by the Shenyang Aircraft Factory itself except the design drawings which were provided by the Soviet Union.

China began the licence production of the J-6 shortly after the J-5, a copy of the MiG-15. Manufacturing settled on an aircraft factory in Shenyang. Interceptors received priority in China. The first flight of the MiG-19P, assembled in China from parts of the Soviet, executed December 17, 1958 by test pilot Wang Youhuai. It was certificated for mass production by the State Certification Committee in April, 1959.

The military services needed a large number of the front-line fighter MiG-19s at that time, therefore the Shenyang Aircraft Factory produced a derivative of MiG-19P designated as J-6 on the basis of the Soviet supplied example aircraft. Pilot Wu Keming flew the first all-Chinese J-6 for the first time on September 30, 1959.

China succeeded in establishing mass production only in 1963. The Shenyang Aircraft Factory was responsible for the license production of the J-6. However, the Great Leap Forward negatively affected the production of the J-6. The aviation industry was under the influence of the "Great Leap Forward" in 1958. Many good rules and regulations were put aside, necessary organizations were disbanded, and unhealthy tendency of neglecting quality while pursuing quantity appeared. Over-ambitious production goals and lack of thorough testing resulted in the mass production of poor quality aircraft. In the end a large number of finished aircraft could not be delivered to the military services because of inferior production quality and all the J-6s produced in that year had to be improved in three years. A large quantity of finished aircraft could not be delivered for use because and additional three years had to be committed to the repair of flaws in the aircraft, including the Shenyang WP6 engines.

The Shenyang Aircraft Factory began its prototype production of the J-6 in 1961 for the second time with more emphasis on quality control. The methods used in the initial prototype production were not repeated. A complete set of drawings and technical documents of the Soviet MiG-19C were copied and the production tooling and master tooling were rebuilt. Based on a proposal by Wang Qigong, vice general secretary of the party in the factory, Luo Shida, vice chief technician of the factory drafted a document "Standards for Operation" which set up 10 standards to be conformed to in the second prototype production period of the J-6. Lu Gang, director of the factory, formally issued orders-to put into practice "Standards for Operation" in prototype production, so that it began on the right lines.

The previous J-6 suffered horizontal surface vibration due to the flawed design of a hydraulic booster valve that controlled the horizontal surface, and was solved with the addition of a hydraulic damper. The licence production of the WP6 engine carried out again by the Shenyang Engine Factory and was certified in October 1961. A J-6 was at last successfully built with high quality domestic parts in December, 1963 and the design of the J-6 was certificated for mass production by the State Certification Committee. By 1964, the J-6 was re-certified for production.

In December 1961, in accordance with the requirements of the General Staff and the National Defense Science and Technology Commission, the Air Force proposed a seven-year plan for major technical equipment (1961-1967). In the plan, the Air Force proposed to imitate the imported MiG-19S (the basic J-6) first, and then imitate the MiG-21F-13. It is not difficult to see that the emergence of the F-6 basic model is actually a remedy for the slow growth of the Air Force's combat effectiveness caused by the imitation problem. In the case of failure of the reference design, a complete clone of the MiG-19S became the only option at the time. At the same time, it should be noted that on March 30, 1961, China had obtained the production license of MiG-21F-13.

Then the Air Force required that the MiG-19S (the basic J-6) be imitated first, and its intention is very clear: to promote the Chinese aviation industry to completely realize the transition to the supersonic era, to lay a good foundation for the production of supersonic aircraft, and to imitate a more modern one. The second-generation supersonic fighter was being prepared. In terms of the actual needs of the Air Force, the basic J-6 will be a transitional fighter before the imitation MiG-21 enters service, and the necessary number of low-end fighters will be maintained under the condition of insufficient economic strength (the price of the basic J-6 is about 60 Ten thousand yuan, only 1/2 of the price of the J-7).

The plant at Nanchang undertook series production of the MiG-19P (J-6) , but it failed to establish mass production. Work on a copy of the MiG-19PM (J-6A) stretched on by a good decade and a half - the first production J-6A only left the plant in 1977.