Mirage VI

[tigercat2]

Great looking tiger scheme and very good stories.  It looked great alongside the Arrow.




Wes W.

[Archibald]

The first G8 (former G4) was changed into a single seater and used as testbed and chase plane for the Mirage VI. It flew on 13th july 1971. Two years later, it reached mach 2.35 at 49 000 ft over Istres with Jean Marie Saget at the controls.
It was later refitted with the M53s of the VI and reached mach 2.53 in 1974.

The Mirage VI-01 flew in Spetember 1973 with Saget at the controls.
The plane was so powerfull that during one of the last engines tests, brakes could not retain the plane which started to move with the wheels locked, leaving tracks of burned ties! Saget imediately stopped, but the brakes had to be modified...

Saget narrate its first contact with this aircraft
"I made many flight at the controls of the G8-01 in spring 1973. this was a powerfull aircraft, but nothing compared to the "6" as we all named it.
On 6th June 1973 the Mirage VI was carefully driven to the end of the Istres runway.It walked around the thing... it was an incredible aircraft!
It had a massive nose with a reduced canopy, monstruous air intakes and exhausts... it gave an impression of power even without moving...
I made the first flight of it on 21th September 1973 and was astonished by the brute power of the aircraft. Acceleration was tremendous and over the weeks I gradually opened the flight enveloppe.
On 24th September I broke mach.1 at 35 000 ft. My chase plane was a vautour from the CEV.
On 29th September, top speed was pushed to mach 2.2. Chase plane was now a Mirage IIIB from which many photos were taken.
But right from the beginning of october, the G8-01 was to be used as chase plane...
(more to follow)  B)  

[Archibald]

On the morning of 6th October 1973, the Mirage VI-01 was thundering on Istres runway with saget at the controls. Target Mach 3! The Mirage G8 and Mirage IIIB were already airborne... The three aircrafts climbed over the clouds and postioned at thye begining of the supersonic corridor, over the Mediterranean sea.
BEM Henri Poincaré was cruising off shore the coast to follow the flight with its radars, and Super Frelon were on alert in the case that something would go wrong...
Having reach 58000 ft Saget light the burners and the plane started to accelerate until it reached mach 3.02... it then slowed, Mirage IIIB and G8 monitored the prototype to see if something had blown up...
Later Jean Coureau peaked at 95 000 ft in a zoom climb.
Main problem was the lack of flying targets with such performances, so the Nord
CT-41  was bring back to operational status...

[Archibald]

Dassault Mirage VI

Length 18m
Span 12 m
Wing area 80 sqm
MTOW 23 500 kg
Powerplant : 2*M53-S3 11500kgp each
Top speed : mach 3.1
Ceiling: 70 000 ft
Armement : up to four super-530F SARH, two Magic-1 IR, AN-52 nuclear weapon, rockets pods and iron bombs.
Range : operational, 800km
           ferry 3800 km (with two 2500 L drop tanks)