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Taking to the air for the first time on July 5 1969 was a new plane. To the deafening cheers of spectators, the plane took off, and made two passes before landing. They were witnessing the high watermark of their country’s aviation industry, a product of almost five years of toil from some of China’s finest, and the best resources it could muster. It was the J-8 prototype, and for a long time it looked to never fly. But the worst was not over yet.

The J-8 program can be seen as the embodiment of China’s long struggle to come to its feet in modern history. Being conceived at a time of great social upheaval, and a dire shortage of technical skills and resources has meant that the program’s development has followed a fate almost intertwined with that of its parent nation. Thus, it was only recently when a more stable China has yielded an atmosphere more conducive to defence R&D that the project has begun to realise its true potential, and in the process become both a benefactor and recipient to new defence technologies.

In the early 60’s, China was facing new air threats, bombers, fighters, and reconnaissance planes from both the Soviet Union and the USA that its MiG-21/J-7s were looking increasing incapable of handling. Against this backdrop, a requirement was issued for a new fighter, and after several years of preliminary studies, a program was finally started by CAE in May 1964. In the design conceptualisation phase that followed, two possibilities were examined. The first called for a single-engined fighter, which would have needed a completely new engine, while the second was for a fighter similar in configuration to the MiG-21, but with two modified engines. The second was subsequently chosen as the more feasible path in a meeting chaired by the president of CAE, Tang Yangjie.

Shenyang Aircraft Design Institute, and Shenyang Aircraft Factory were given the task of shouldering most of the development work, which was fast underway by September 1965. But ahead of them was not an easy task for an aviation industry only just trying to establish itself. The plan was to produce a plane surpassing the MiG-21/J-7 in every way, and this gave rise to an ambitious set of target specifications:

Speed: Mach 2.2
Service Ceiling: >20,000M
Max Initial Climb rate: 200m/sec
Combat radius: 750-1000km
A range of new weapons, and a long-range radar was also prescribed.

A daunting task, but the project also had several things working in its favour. For a start, despite the lack of know-how in the industry, three years had been spend prior to the start of the project in reverse-engineering the MiG-21 design. Since the J-8 was to be based on the MiG-21, it gave China the ideal launching pad. The second reason was the high priority allocated to the project. From the outset, top military officials had taken a keen interest in the project, and people like Marshal Nie Rongzhen even played a key role in influencing concept definition. This might have led to the project earning ‘pet’ status among some of China’s military elite, giving the official blessing needed to secure the best resources available.

And for a Third World country supposed to be perched on the edge of revolution, China certainly did not skimp. 680 of China’s most experienced and talented personnel were made available to the project, allowing them to work with the best ideas, and then have the numbers to subordinate their implementation out to different groups. The end result was that problems were overcome with surprising efficiency. For example, Vice Chief Designer Gu Songfen led a group responsible to sifting through different aerodynamic proposals using wind tunnel testing, another group worked on copying the Soviet A-A gun, yet another group implemented the idea to redesign the MiG-21 style wing structure – resulting in a modest weight saving, and all of this took place along side efforts to establish, from scratch, the processes needed for prototype fabrication.

However, even before the prototype could fly, events took a turn for the worse. The Chief Engineer Gao Fangqi died of illness, and his successor, was soon forced to face up to the new realities of the Cultural Revolution, when in November 1966 he was purged from his work. Thereafter a joint J-8 Development Command was established to oversee operations, no doubt a measure to allow everyone involved to offer mutual support. This combined with the project’s geographical location, Shenyang, away from the most chaotic parts, and that top military officials had a vested interest, meant that it was able to survive through even the toughest periods, albeit with tremendous difficulty, as radical elements within the country chipped away at the project bit by bit.