Mirage III, Mirage V, Nesher, Dagger, and Kfir

[Tophe]

To reach Very High Performances, the Mirage layout had to be changed, into twin-boom:

[Tophe]

Two weeks ago, I wrote a what-if History of "Who broke the sound barrier?", my 2 personal theories being a Mirage or an asymmetric Mirage. It is in French, sorry, at http://www.kristofmeunier.fr/murSon.htm

[Tophe]

In the Dassault design bureau, there was a big jealousy: "Why the British engineers found before us how to have a twin-jet without asymmetry on a single engine" (if one fails or is shut down in cruise to increase range). So Mirages were modified to be (almost) as good (without paying Copyright):

[martinbayer]

Tophe,

there was actually a real project to install an afterburning Viper turbojet in its own pod on top of the Mirage III rear fuselage for Australia, see https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/unbuilt-prototype-mirages-1955-1980.837/page-6#post-177848.

Martin

[Tophe]

Thanks Martin!

[Tophe]

Seeing the (technical) success of the B-58 Hustler, Dassault Industries argued: "this is an illegal copy of our own Mirage 558: of course we thought of such a multi-engine Mirage, not falling down from the sky if the jet fails!"

[Tophe]

Thanks to Scotaidh's topic https://www.whatifmodellers.com/index.php?topic=46590.0 (about EE Lightnings), here are modified Mirages:

[Tophe]

The Dassault engineers, seeing the North American YF-107 Ultra-Sabre, were much impressed. Then they "invented" the Ultra-Mirage, and North American required a big Copyright. That is the reason why it was not mass produced.

[Tophe]

During the Sales of the Century, circa 1975, Dassault commercials laughed of the YF-16 canopy: "without proper windscreen, it will explode at the first bird hurting it!", but the F-16 won the contract and flew safely. So canopies of Dassault Mirages were a little updated, ahem...

[Tophe]

Dassault designers judged the dorsal tank on the Skyhawk was a good idea...

(but not mass produced as the Copyright price was excessive)

[Tophe]

In the years 1968-1973, I was just a llittle kid, and I heard words I did not understand: "about France and USSR, let's make love not war", and that direction, mixed with Mirages 5, Yakovlev 28, Ilyushin 28, gave babies:

[Tophe]

A big nose may be useful for a huge radar like on the Mirage 2000, but it is so ugly... (on a slim Mirage 5)

[Tophe]

And from a cartoon book (I presented the source at https://www.whatifmodellers.com/index.php?topic=34696.225 ):

[PR19_Kit]

The Mirage SIG stand at Telford had a central display of various Mirage prototypes, and the differences between them and the production versions is quite astonishing.

I'll try and take a pic of the display tomorrow.

[Tophe]

The Mirage SIG stand at Telford had a central display of various Mirage prototypes, and the differences between them and the production versions is quite astonishing.
I'll try and take a pic of the display tomorrow.

Haven't you found something interesting? or is this posted elsewhere?

And from a cartoon book (I presented the source at https://www.whatifmodellers.com/index.php?topic=34696.225 ):

I just got volume 2 with different silhouettes, interesting also: