William Boeing was a pioneer in US aviation and founder of the Pacific Airplane Company in 1916. Within a year the company was renamed The Boeing Company which became the largest exporter in the USA (by dollar value). Ten years after his death in 1956, he was welcomed into the National Aviation Hall of Fame. Boeing was born in the USA—his mother was from Austria and his father was German. 

While Boeing is well known in the USA and in the world, his two contemporaries in the Soviet Union are not so well known in the West—Mikoyan and Gurevich. In the late 1930s, the Soviet Union called on citizen Mikoyan, born in Soviet Armenia, to design an aircraft. He accepted on condition that his friend and fellow aeronautical engineer, Gurevich accompany him. Citizen Gurevich was born into a Jewish family in Ukraine*—then a part of the USSR. The Mikoyan and Gurevich Design Bureau was successful in what was called the MiG. The ‘Mi’ was combined with the ‘G’ from both their names and became the basic staple in the Soviet Air Force; and is key today in Russia. Indeed, India, Arab nations and others have bought MiGs for their air forces. One notable transaction was when the USA bought 21 MiGs from Ukraine’s neighbor, Moldova, which inherited them and other key equipment from what became Russia after the 1991 fall of the USSR. Moldova was too small** to maintain them; the USA wanted to know more about this successful fighter jet; and there was a fear that Iran might buy them. 

So, what do Boeing, Mikoyan and Gurevich have in common? One obvious answer is their enormous contribution to aviation in two of the world’s most rival nations. Boeing is better known for civilian aircraft, and Mikoyan and Gurevich for supplying air forces around the world; but both are involved in private aeronautics. Another similarity is that all three are citizens of their respective nation, each with roots in a culture/ethnicity that is different from the majority culture/ethnicity of their nation they successfully served. While Boeing was the son of immigrants from Austria and Germany, Mikoyan and Gurevich were members of a minority ethnicity/religion in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics(USSR). 

The USA has a large population of ethnic Armenians (about half a million)*** and Russians (over 3 million). Some Armenian Americans came to the USA as Turkish citizens and Russian citizens, as did some Ukrainians, Moldovans, and Georgians. 

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 *Volodymyr Zelensky, the President of Ukraine today, was also born into a Jewish family in Ukraine when it was part of the USSR.

**Moldova is smaller than the metro population of Portland, Oregon, USA.

***Most Armenian family names end in ‘ian.’ If the ‘i’ is preceded by a vowel, the ‘i’ is changed to a ‘y,’ as in Mikoyan.

Some of the data above is from Wikipedia.