History is.

 

Dassault products with the exception of Etendard technically failed. 

 

Even the Brewster Buffalo was dangerous in the hands of a superb pilot.

Junk is.

Hamilcar :

"Best information response 1."

IF your best response is a thread about an entirely different aircraft then I suggest you give up now.

 

"Response 2. What BVR capability did the Mirage IIIC have? What radar and rockers? You realize that the Matra Magic  530 was a WVR mussile? The Cyrano radar was joke. "

The Matra R530 was a 20km range SARH missile which makes it BVR. The Matra Magic (which incidentally was designated 550, rather than 530 like you incorrectly do here) was a tail chase WRV IR missile.

As for, maneuverability, like most pure deltas in heavy air, it was pig with poor turn and angle of attack.

It wasn't the most manouverable type of the day but it wasn't the least either. That is why I said it had fair manouverability.


Nopr was the Mirage all that longed ranged.

By the standards of the fighters in its class (Mig-21, F-104, Lightning, Draken, F-5) it was the best of the lot when it came to range, I'm not sure but I think the F-8 may have been comparable. The only ones that significantly outranged it were big expensive types like the Phantom and the F-106.

Most Israeli kills were with the GUN. 

The early AAM's were not well suited for fighter on fighter combat but they were effective against bombers. That is why the 530 is important, in the interception role it allowed the Mirage to make a head on pass against a bomber formation before turning behind and attacking with Magics and guns. Given that fuel is always a consideration having an opportunity for a kill up front would have been well worth it. As it transpired there weren't many opportunities to fight bomber formations so this capability wasn't used, but it was still an important part of the Mirage's arsenal that the Lightning didn't have except for a very limited head on capability with Red Top.

In defense of the Lightning, the Feranti radar worked as did the missiles. You can't fault a target defense interceptor for being a target defense interceptor. 

 

Its radar was very limited and the missiles were horribly unreliable. Whats more building a target defence interceptor for a country with long-range approaches like the UK was a stupid idea in the first place. When they started designing it it was ubundantly clear that bombers wouldn't just be dropping freefall bombs in the future, stand-off weapons were a real prospect. The Lightning's short range meant that it had a severely limited ability to conduct CAP's and tackle standoff bombers. Essentially they built in obsolescence through a poor design philosphy, much like Mig did with the Mig-21.

 

Go look at the record of the Mig 21 in the first half of the Vietnam war, and see how many victories it had over F-4's and 105's. Most of those pilots that got those kills were Russian or well trained Vietnamese pilots, which some were aces.

My response was to show Dassault history, to show a customer unloading a Dassault turkey and why. History repeats.  Israel unloaded her Dassault aircraft as soon as she could find better. Taiwan appears to have done the same.

 And what I said  was that its range was no better than anyone else, which is the truth..

 

 F-104 combat radius about 350  n.miles.

 Mirage III about 350-370  n.miles SOURCE.

SAAB Dtaken 350 n. miles

But it didn't work.  Again....

That is not what the British  thought. They were looking beyond Red Top for a long range missile that they just didn't develop. They in the mean time needed an interceptor that would climb fast and point at an intruder in a hurry. And with a combat radius of 300 n. miles it was not too bad-ranged compared to the others in the interceptor class. In that respect it was no worse than the Starfighter and the Draken All of them were better than the Mirage for their designed functions.


The only other ones to use it in combat were the Argentinians and Sentenial has already explained to you that its poor showing there were due to facing a more modern, better trained opponent while operating at extreme range. If you want to apply that test why not apply it to the Lightning, it didn't fight anybody.

I happen to compare it to the Mig 21 which it most closely resembled as to technology. and bench-marled it against the F-4  Both  aircraft are known to have fought the Mig 21. The Mig 21s knocked down some American F-4s in Vietnam which shows that pilo9ts trained to ise the plane could win.. Let's see how the Mirage III did when furballed with Mig 21s when the Mig 21s were IN FORCE and Nashers (Israeli F-4s)  arrived to rescue them?

 

According to Israeli pilots. 

 

That was not at extreme range. 

The Nesher was the Israeli version of the Mirage 5, Hamlicar.  The Kurnass was the Israeli name for the F-4.  Not sure if that was a typo or a mistake on your part.

 

I'm not buying the idea that the Mirage III was a poor dogfighter.  The Israelis got over 200 kills with it.  That's nearly as many kills as F-4s got over Vietnam in a shorter timespan.  Some of that can be put down to the fact that Israeli pilots were uniformly good and the Egyptian and Syrian pilots were so bad (Jordanian Hunter pilots were regarded as exceptional).  Sure, the Mirage did have a tendency to blank the tail with the wing and the Atar 9C had a bad tendency to despool in tight turns.  The Israelis had to overcome those disadvantages much as American pilots had to overcome the F-4's sluggish turn rate and lack of a gun.  Yet the F-4 still turned in an excellent performance in Vietnam, and the Mirage III was similarly good.  If the planes were complete crap, it wouldn't have mattered.  (The Buffalo isn't the best analogy.  The only people who got it to work were the Finns, and they made sure they had plenty of top cover when they did.)

 

If the Mirage deltas were such crap, why did the Israelis choose to base the Nesher directly on it, and use the Mirage as the basis for the Kfir?  The Nesher was deadly during Yom Kippur, and the Kfir's proven to be a reliable striker; it's kill record is low because the Israelis were sending up F-15s and F-16s by that time.

 

Hamilcar, I don't know if you're Herald or not, but you're showing just as much an irrational hatred for Dassault as BW shows an irrational love for it.  The Mystere and Super Mystere were fine aircraft.  The Mirage F.1 was a success story--and a proven fighter when piloted by competent guys, as the South Africans and Kuwaitis proved.  The Mirage 2000 has likewise been a success.  Using Libya, Argentina, and Zaire as a club to beat the Mirage III is a disservice: Libya's pilots couldn't catch clap in a whorehouse, Argentina's pilots were fighting at the edge of their range with poor missiles against superb FAA pilots with all the time in the world and the best Sidewinders ever, and Zaire...geez, Zaire?  Those people are lucky to eat regularly, let alone get a competent air force in the air.  And most of us here would agree the Rafale is a good aircraft, even if it took ten years to get the bugs out.

 

 

So when was that?

Three North Vietnamese pilots became aces in MiG-21s and possibly one Russian as well.  There were Arab MiG-21 aces, though many of them were better-trained Pakistanis flying in Egyptian service. 

 

I've had the pleasure to talk to many USAF MiG killers, and none of them ever said they held the MiG-21 in contempt.  Quite the opposite.

 The Mystere and Super Mystere were fine aircraft.  The Mirage F.1 was a success story--and a proven fighter when piloted by competent guys, as the South Africans and Kuwaitis proved.  The Mirage 2000 has likewise been a success

The Nesher was the Israeli version of the Mirage 5, Hamlicar.  The Kurnass was the Israeli name for the F-4.  Not sure if that was a typo or a mistake on your part.

Nesher is the Mirage 5. Israel wanted a simpler variant of the Mirage III without the Cyrano radar, since it felt the Cyrano radar wasn't really necessary for the clear-weather operations in the Middle East. The Mirage 5 is simply a Mirage IIIE (and not a Mirage IIIC) without the Cyrano IIbis radar, but a small Aida ranging radar plus other avionics relocated from behind the cockpit into the nose, freeing up space for additional fuel.

The 50 Mirage 5s originally ordered by Israel were embargoed in 1967, but Dassault later supplied Israel with 50 new Mirage 5Js. They were deliveried in crates with the help of USAF C-5 and C-141 transports during 1970, and were put together with the help of US engineers in Israel. Thus the Nesher was born.

 

Gene Salvay, an experienced aircraft designer working for Rockwell, was sent to Israel in 1970, in order to mate the Mirage fuselage with the US-built J79 engine. He re-designed the fuselage, did the necessary re-calculations (with some help from Dassault). Thus the Kfir C.1 was born . Salvay retured to the USA in 1971, after which a team of 12 other US designers took over his work.

It is a fighter en par with the Viper, with both aircraft having their individual advantages and disadvantages.

Senty and USAJoe,

 

I would note that at no stage have I said that I hold the Mig-21 in contempt. It was clearly a dangerous opponent under the right circumstances, it is just that those circumstances were unnacceptably limited due to a poor tactical philosphy of employing airpower on the part of the Soviets, and some out and out design faults. After the Bekea the Soviets acknowledge that their tactical philosphy was flawed and their aircraft designs changed as a result. So I repeat, the type was ok but not good, and it definately wasn't one of the best 3 of the era like you are suggesting USAjoe.

 

On the perfomance on the type in Vietnam, I suspect did reasonably well then because the circumstances in which it was operated were ideal for it. The Vietnamese were able to use it in an entirely defensive manner under radar control against heavily laden bombers, which was exactly what it was designed to do. That is not to say that they didn't do a good job, they did become very skilled at co-ordinating ground controlled intercepts using different packages of aircraft and they had some very good pilots

 

Out of interest I've counted all the Mig-21 vs Phantom (minus RF-4) kills on the ACIG Vietnam War page and it pans out like this.

 

Mig 21 on F-4 - 33 definate and 32 confirmed

 

F-4 on Mig 21 - 77 definate

 

(these figures are approximate - I'm counting late at night and I may have gotten it slightly wrong)

 

So on the raw figures the Phantom comes out on top by more than a two to one margin on confirmed kills and just better than a one to one advantage in the unlikely event (due to the prevalence of SAM's and AA competing for kills) that all the unconfirmed kills by the Mig 21 did occur. However in fairness 40 of the Phantom kills were with Sparrows, with most of these probably being BVR shots that no other fighter of the time could have avoided (the F-4 crews did use Sparrows WVR sometimes, when they were out of Sidewinders). This puts the Migs just less than even against the Phantom WVR on confirmed kills and with up to a 2 to 1 advantage against them if all the unconfirmed kills occurred.

 

However, we have to remember that the Phantom was being used by the Americans not only as fighter but also as a bomb laden strike aircraft, making many vulnerable to attack by the Migs which were only used as a fighter. With this in mind the Migs should have achieved a significantly positive kill ratio in WVR combat, especially given the ideal circumstances under which they operated. 

 

Israel wanted the Mirage 5 so badly that it stole the plans and reverse engineered it into the Nesher, at the same time as it was acquiring Phantoms. That is the fact of the matter.

The Matra R-530 was a 20 km flyout missile. Like most book ranges given for missiles, that value has to be taken with a huge grain of salt. Most times you could cut the range to the bomber target to less than a third, which is well within WVR and still MISS/

 

 

F-104 combat radius about 350  n.miles.

Mirage III about 350-370  n.miles SOURCE.

SAAB Dtaken 350 n. miles

 

Your source actually says 300 to 470 miles for the Mirage depending on mission which assuming that they are talking about statute miles translates into 260 to 408 nm (See link to conversion calculator below). That might be the case for the Mirage IIIC but it definately isn't for the Mirage IIIE which had extra fuel in its 11 inch fuselage extension. Look at this map which shows the distance between the Mirage III base in Argentina, Rio Gallegos, and the Falkland Islands. Port Stanley is about 450 statue miles (391 nm) east of the base and San Carlos waters is about 400 (347nm). My reference "Air War in the South Atlantic" by Ethell and Price (1983) indicates that  with two 1700 litre tanks the Argentine Mirages could operate at high altitude in the AO for about 12 minutes, which suggests that for an aircraft cruising at 400 knots we would add about another 80nm to those combat radius's. That means that we are looking at a combat radius of somewhere between 430nm and 470nm for the Mirage 111E, which is between 22% to 34% more than your quoted combat radiuses for the Draken and the F-104. Note that this corrosponds with the FAS website below, which quotes a 900nm cruise range (that is a 450 nm combat radius).

link

1. Sidewinder and Sparrow were used against fighters, so 16% and 8% were respectable.(the ACTUAL numbers)

2. Matra R-530 you proclaimed a BVR missile. No such thing truly existed until the AMRAAM program. Even that missile has most of its kills within 30 n. miles or less of the launch aircraft. Matra R-530 at 20 kilometers or a  total flyout at 12 miles is a beyond visual range missile? No.

3.I didn't confuse the Kurnass with the Mirage. I plainly said they were F-4s that came to the rescue of the Mitages as sited  on the Israeli Phantom aces book. Reread oif you missed that part.

 

As to overall accuracy. I call it a draw, based on 1, 2, and 3.

 

The rest of my opinions are based on my presentation of known facts-including the testimony of actual users and  maintainers that you sneered at on the Key Publishing Forum I cited. You will fond tidbits in those conversations that you will not find in official histories or in the Dassault propaganda broadsides.  The Mirage was just not as good as you think it was. It certainly had more grave actual design and manufacture defects than most of its contemporaries.

 

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