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In 1963, the Air Force put forward the idea of developing a highly manoeuvrable light fighter aircraft for evacuation and short-distance take-off in case of destruction of airports under the condition of nuclear war, to meet the needs of the people's war and to carry out aerial guerrilla warfare. This idea was strongly supported by Vice Commander Lin, and a meeting was held by the Ministry of Aviation Industry in the middle of 1964, and the task of light fighter development was given to Nanchang 320 Factory, and the project was codenamed "J-12" in March, the overall programme was confirmed to enter into the development of prototype in May, and the design was completed at the end of the next year, and the trial production was begun. In May 1966, the prototype completed its first flight. In response to the many problems that appeared in the test flight, the Ministry of Aviation Industry organised all the related units to carry out technical research in the form of a general battle, and concentrated on solving the problems under the circumstance of weak technical force and insufficient design experience. After more than one year's improvement, the aircraft passed the acceptance and finalisation at the end of 1967, and started mass production.
The J-12 adopts the nose intake layout, the overall shape is similar to the MiG 21, but it adopts the lower monoplane layout, and the aircraft design adopts the area rate, which effectively reduces the high-speed flight resistance. The newly developed automatic flaps on the leading edge of the swept-back wing effectively improve the manoeuvrability of the aircraft. In order to improve the take-off and landing performance to meet the requirement of short take-off and landing, the aircraft adopts backward slit flaps and installs self-developed blowing flaps, which can shorten the take-off and landing distance by 30% when using blowing flaps. The aircraft adopts the integral single-piece windscreen, which effectively improves the forward vision. J-12 boldly adopts many new structures, techniques and materials, and the weight factor of the aircraft structure is greatly reduced compared with that of J-6 and even the newly introduced J-7, which further improves the performance. Due to the small size of J12, in order to increase the fuel to improve the retention time and combat radius, the wing structure fuel tanks are adopted.
In order to increase the fuel capacity and combat radius, the wing structure fuel tank was adopted, and the space inside the fuselage was excavated as much as possible, so that an internal fuel capacity of 1500kg was obtained. The aircraft is powered by a Turbojet 6C engine with 32 kN of thrust and 40 kN of added thrust. A radar rangefinder was mounted in the nose intake cone, which was interconnected with the sights and had no all-weather capability. Two 30-1 guns, each with 80 rounds of ammunition, are mounted on both wing roots. The wing fuselage has three mounting points for fuel tanks, rockets and bombs.
J-12A: During the development of J-12, the idea of mounting a solid rocket engine on the belly of the aircraft to take off at a short distance by using the launcher was put forward. During the project demonstration, the young technicians of 320 factory put forward a bold idea, which was to interconnect the aircraft with the launcher and the fire-control radar of surface-to-air missiles, to use the same guidance method as that of surface-to-air missiles to steer the aircraft, and to turn to artificial flight after the aircraft came into contact with the target, to make use of the launcher to take off from the site with good adaptability, to make use of the fire-control radar to steer the aircraft with high automation degree, high steering precision, and high interception efficiency. This proposal was highly appreciated by Vice Commander Lin at the model meeting, and then entered into formal development.320 Factory, together with the Second Research Institute of the Ministry of Aerospace Industry, carried out collaborative research and drew reference from the introduction of the Soviet S-75 missile system, designed the aircraft's auto-pilot and remote-control device, and improved the guidance radar on the basis of the Red Flag No.2 guidance radar, and a radar could guide up to 8 aircrafts at the same time to intercept the target by remote-control. The solid rocket booster of J-12A comes from the Red Flag 2 missile, which is improved for the use of the aircraft by adjusting the angle of the nozzle, and the booster is fixed on the belly mount, which is disposed of after a one-time use in the air. The launcher was improved from the Soviet-made 542 missile launcher introduced by the Navy in the early years, with a fixed elevation angle for launching after erection and a transverse crosslink with the radar to aim at the target heading.
Due to technical difficulties, until the end of 1968 to test the first prototype, after a large number of test flights to improve the 1969 completion of the final type began to equip the troops Trial.