Fun fact: one of the Sidewinders the USSR received from China for research was a missile that had become lodged and undetonated, inside a Chinese MiG-17 that was fired on by Taiwanese Sabres.

In War Thunder the MiG-19PT will be the first rank VI supersonic plane in the Soviet/Russian tech tree and the first Soviet aircraft equipped with air-to-air missiles. Unlike its overseas competitor the F-100D Super Sabre, the MiG-19PT cannot carry bombs or unguided rockets, but its two turbojet engines give the MiG the advantage in terms of rate of climb and acceleration. Both of these engines require an incredible amount of fuel, which limits their flight time to 5-6 minutes in WEP. The smartest thing for a MiG-19PT pilot to do is to climb to a high altitude at the beginning of a battle and then switch the engine to a more fuel-efficient mode.

Its frontal armament consisting of twin 30mm guns has decent ballistics and will deal almost fatal damage even in short bursts, but hitting a target at the speeds at which the MiG-19 is most effective in the context of the game is no simple matter. The MiG-19PT’s main weapons are two K-13 missiles that quite reliably lock onto the thermal signatures of running jet engines, turboshaft engines, and certain piston engines from the rear hemisphere of the target. Within the context of the game, the K-13 is virtually the same as the AIM-9B Sidewinder – some targets can be locked onto at a range of more than 3 kilometers, but the low flight loads for which the first versions of the air-to-air missiles were designed make it fairly easy for an enemy with a reserve of energy to evade an attack by maneuvering.