I am looking for a MIG-15 and I saw a MIG-15 bis from Tamiya on Ebay once. What does the “bis” stand for?
There was a big discussion about this a while ago. What it boils down to basically is that Russian aircraft didn’t use designators like American aircraft like the F-15A, B, C, D, and E. “Bis” generally means “Again”.
MiG-15 bis is “improved” or follow on. It’s the French way of naming aircraft. The Italians also used bis in some of their aircrafts.
The Soviets used to use a system based on function of aircraft with sequential numbers and then a type number of models. Stalin changed it just prior to the beginning of WWII when they went to a designer designation and decriptive abbreviation for subtypes.