dean wrote:

No one mounts wings in the middle of the fuselage. of course, there's
a reason for this. by having them either above or below the fuselage,
the wings can be a single structure. if it's midmounted, then you
have to beef up the fuselage to support the wings. so if it wasn't a
wing, it could have been a horizontal stabilizer.


TsAGI told MiG that their wind tunnel research showed the mid-mounted
wing was the best aerodynamically, so MiG was pretty much forced to
mount them that way from the MiG 15 to MiG 21, even though that meant
heavy rings around the motor to support them.

Pat