Super Etendard Ideas

[FAR148]

Happy New Year! 

So my best friend got me a Heller Super Etendard for Xmas. It's a cool looking bird but don't have many ideas for it. All I can come up with is updating it as a USMC bird.  Would like to hear your Super Etendard ideas.


Thanks for looking,
Steven   

[Weaver]

1. Give it to anyone else who operates, or has operated a carrier in roughly the relevent time period: Britain, France, The Netherlands, Brazil, Australia, Canada, India.

Maybe The UK and France set up a joint carrier force, or at least a joint acquisition process, in the 1960s/70s and both ended up flying Spey-Crusaders and Avon Super Es.

Maybe the Netherlands or Canada kept their carriers going in the 1970s, or one or the other of them bought Victorious when the UK disposed of her.

Maybe Australia went for the Super E instead of the Skyhawk.

Maybe Brazil kept fixed-wing ops going on the Minas Gerais like Argentine did with the 25 de Mayo.

Maybe India bought Victorious, or commissioned a new Clemenceau class.

[Weaver]

2. The original Etendard was developed for the NBMR-1 light fighter competition won by the Fiat G-91. What if the Etendard had won instead, but had then been developed more, first with a more powerful ATAR engine and then with a radar and/or other sophisticated avionics? This could have seen land-based Super-Es, possibly with different noses and avionics fits, in service with France, Italy, Germany, Greece, Turkey, Portugal or any other NATO member. Maybe the RAF could have taken an Avon or Spey-engined version with a UK nav/attack system as a Hunter replacement instead of the Jaguar?  Exports? The world is your oyster: anyone who bought Mirage 5s, Jaguars or F-5Es would potentially be up for it.

[Weaver]

3. Sell it to anybody who needed Exocet capability in a hurry and wasn't able or willing to wait for an adapted Mirage to do the job. Iraq, in place of it's Mirage F.1EQs, is the example that springs to mind. Or how about South Africa if their Buccaneer order was embargoed? Pakistan would be another possibility.

[Dizzyfugu]

PantherG did several Super Etendard profiles, e. g. in German Marineflieger use - and based on that I created one, too:

1:72 AMD Super Étendard; aircraft '42+15' of Marinefliegergeschwader (MFG) 2, Eggebek (Germany); mid 1984 (Whif) by dizzyfugu, on Flickr


There's a lot of potential - Weaver gave a lot of potential NATO users, and I'd throw India or Pakistan in, too.

[Captain Canada]

South American carrier based. Or Aussie or Kiwi. Kiwi would look good as a carrier based bird done up like their super-sexy A-4s.

[McGreig]

Sell it to anybody who needed Exocet capability in a hurry - - - Iraq, in place of it's Mirage F.1EQs, is the example that springs to mind

Indeed - in the Real World, Iraq received five Super Etendards in 1983, on loan from France pending the arrival of the Mirage F1 EQ-5. Four of the five were returned to France in 1985.

[sandiego89]

Some good ideas offered already, with any of the carrier operators being a good choice, and South/Central America.  

Also lots of ex-french territories that still turned to France for support, where like Weaver offered an Exocet armed SuE would serve well in land based maritime strike role: Djibuti, Senegal, Algeria, Morroco, Haiti with some WHIF oil money....

Some others: Ecuador, Guiana, Peru, Mexico, Greek, Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, Columbia...

Lots of ideas for some colorful SuE's    

[Weaver]

Sell it to anybody who needed Exocet capability in a hurry - - - Iraq, in place of it's Mirage F.1EQs, is the example that springs to mind

Indeed - in the Real World, Iraq received five Super Etendards in 1983, on loan from France pending the arrival of the Mirage F1 EQ-5. Four of the five were returned to France in 1985.

Didn't know they'd done it for real: cheers!

That kind of deal is what inspired the idea: France does things like that to get a sale all the time.

[Cobra]

what about Using the Super Etendard as a French Coastal Air Sea Rescue Plane for when Merchant Ships send out an SOS? think that would Work? Just for You to Consider. Dan

[tahsin]

Give it an F-84 nose intake if the time is not short.

[Dizzyfugu]

That would be a Super Mystère, navalized?

[tahsin]

Whiffing the Mystere into some whiffed Republic line-up would surely make the Super Etendart a navalized F-84?

The difference would be in the "vertical" intake instead of the horizontal F-100 kind in the original.

[Weaver]

Make it more of a fighter: fit the front fuselage (with bigger radar), afterburning engine nozzle and variable intakes from a Mirage III.

[pyro-manic]

Test and evaluation with a crazy colour scheme, or civilian aggressor, like the BAE Skyhawks in Germany?