Oh, I know. I took the "did the Russians struggle just as much?" question qualitatively, as in, yes, the Mig-21 was also notoriously unsafe and the Russians str

Oh, I know. I took the "did the Russians struggle just as much?" question qualitatively, as in, yes, the Mig-21 was also notoriously unsafe and the Russians struggled with it, too. Their track records would be very difficult to compare even if detailed operational history were available. Figures from some external operators are comparable. For instance, slightly less than half of the CF-104s operated by the Canadian Air Force ended up in some accident or another, slightly more than half of the Indian Air Force's Mig-21s were lost in crashes. I'm specifically mentioning the Canadian Air Force's experience because their CF-104s flew longer hours than just about any other F-104 variant. However, that's almost twice as bad as the figures Federal Germany got (just south of 300 out of their 900-something aircraft). Thing is, Mig-21s were definitely flown to smithereens (hence the relevance of the CF-104s operational history, because CF-104s were also flown to smithereens). Money was tight beyond the Iron Curtain so most airplanes stayed in service forever, planned economy (even in the carefully-regulated defense industry) frequently resulted in supply shortages so maintenance was difficult, maintenance wasn't always top-notch due to personnel and supply management issues, so it's not always easy to say which side of the neglect border each incident was. It's hard to decouple these things from the design, too, maintenance complexity is itself a design trade-off. The F-117 has a better safety track record than the Mig-21, but if they'd been handed a squadron of F-117s, the vast majority of the Mig-21's (former) operators would've ran them into the ground in a matter of weeks.