In Novosibirsk, an I-16 fighter was restored for the Victory Parade. It took part in the Great Patriotic War. This is the only fully operational example of such a combat vehicle in Russia. The fighter flew over the city together with the TVS-2MS aircraft — a modern analogue of the An-2.
The length of the I-16 is 5.86 meters. The first modification of the combat vehicle was called type 4. Its production started in 1934. The fighter was equipped with an M-22 engine with a capacity of 480 horsepower. This is a renamed French engine Gnome-Rhone «Jupiter» VI, which was then widely used on aircraft in many countries.
The second modification of the I-16 — type 24 — was created in 1940. It was equipped with a 1100-horsepower engine. The combat vehicle developed a speed of up to 489 kilometers per hour. The I-16 was armed with 4 ShKAS machine guns of 7.62 mm caliber.
The fighter was used during the Spanish Civil War (1936), in the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937), during the Battles of Lake Khasan (1938), in the Soviet-Japanese conflict at Khalkhin Gol (1939), during the Polish campaign of the Red Army (1939), in the Winter War (1939–1940), during the Great Patriotic War.
The I-16 was the main fighter of the Red Army from 1936 to 1942, when its production was discontinued. It was decommissioned in 1953.
Earlier www1.ru wrote that an American journalist admired the Soviet MiG-21 fighter