Thiaria: Other people's airplanes

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Dassault Mirage F.4

An early example for completely botched international co-operation was the AFVG, designed in the mid-1960s jointly by BAC and Dassault. The project was doomed from the beginning, because Dassault did not really want it to succeed, fearing the type might replace all other Dassault types in French Service. After much obfuscation and stalling, Dassault was hit by karma when main competitor Breguet presented a private-venture design, the Br.120 Orfraie, which could take the AFVG’s mantle in the air-to-ground-role, and the French government cancelled AFVG in 1967 and ordered Orfraies instead. In the end, Dassault could live with this; as Orfraie was no fighter in anyone’s book and would not supersede the Mirage. The deal literally saved Breguet from a hostile takeover by Dassault.

Although some of AFVG’s DNA survived and later spawned the Tornado, the project itself was dead. What survived, however, was the plane’s engine. The Bristol/SNECMA M45G was a small, compact (72cm diameter, 900 kg weight) and thoroughly modern afterburning turbofan with exceptionally good fuel economy; it provided 35kN dry and 58 kN wet. For a ten-ton swing-wing plane, it was not really powerful enough, but it served as a basis for Tornado’s stronger RB.199. When Rolls-Royce started work on the RB.199, the M45 was no longer of interest to the Brits, and they sold all licenses to SNECMA, who wanted to turn it into a high-bypass turbofan for civilian aircraft. Dassault considered this engine, lighter and a lot more economical than the Atar 8K-50, with less dry thrust but with a burner, as a means to make Etendard supersonic at no range penalty. Another obvious application was replacing the single Atar 9K-50 in the Mirage F.1 with two M45Gs, to give the French Air Force the long-range interceptor it did not have. Comparative studies showed that this modest upscale of Mirage F.1 would provide a more capable aircraft than a fixed-wing version of the Mirage G.8 with two Atar 9K-50s – same armament, speed and range, better maneuverability, faster climb, lower cost and more range despite smaller fuel tanks. Unfortunately, the necessary re-design of the aft fuselage started right at the intakes, which needed to be made larger in size, and everything else behind the cockpit bulkhead needed to be re-arranged, too. The engine compartment itself obviously was made flatter and wider; since the M45Gs were shorter than the Atar and between them weighed 400kg more, center of gravity moved aft and needed to be compensated by lengthening the fuselage forward. Since the plane was fitted with a more comprehensive electronics and avionics package, another extension forward of the cockpit was needed; both extensions also served to put the center of gravity back where it belonged. Total length increased only modestly, because a new, shorter and wider radar cone was fitted. Wings and control surfaces were taken from the Mirage F.1; due to the wider aft fuselage, the forward wing root was re-designed to give slightly more wingspan and wing area. Another pair of hard points was added to the outer wings, and internal fuel capacity increased by 20% from 3.000 to 3.600 kilograms, mostly in the center hull, plus some in the wings. Unlike the standard Mirage F.1, the twinjet variant – which was named Mirage F.4 in 1971 – had internal ECM and jammers. Re-design work started in 1969 and finished in 1971. The first of four prototypes took to the air on July 22nd, 1972, when the first serial Mirage F.1 fighters were about to be delivered to the French and Spanish Air Forces. From a distance, the F.4 looked like an F.1, but at 8.500 kilograms, it was nearly a ton heavier and packed 60% more wet thrust. Test flights revealed that the F.4 had retained everything that was good about the F.1 – easy serviceability, low maintenance requirement, short reaction and turn-around time, a robust and offroad-capable running gear, docile handling and good maneuverability – and added 40% more rate of climb, 10% more top speed, 50% more range and a state-of-the-art weapons and electronics suite.

Dassault was confident the French Air Force, which had wanted to use the AFVG as a long-range interceptor after all, would want the Mirage F.4 straight away. Unfortunately, they were disinterested. The F.4s price tag was 60% bigger than the F.1s, and for all its added capabilities, purchasing the necessary numbers would be out of budget. The Spaniards likewise kept to the F.1, as did the Greeks, who were in negotiations at that time. The only potential customer willing to upgrade was South Africa, but their requirement of 48 planes was not enough to justify starting series production, which would not be economically viable short of 300 orders. As fate would have it, Germany was looking for a new fighter just then. After over 200 crashes, the German Air Force was thoroughly disgusted with the F-104. The decision to replace it was taken in 1970, and was the reason Germany joined Great Britain in their effort to revive AFVG and develop it into what would become Tornado. As it was clear at that time that an omnirole VG aircraft would take ten years to design, develop and get ready for series production, the German Air Force demanded an immediate off-the-shelf solution for replacing at least part of the Starfighter fleet. Since the Germans wanted Tornado as a bomber, this part would be the fighter force. The Luftwaffe specified twin engines for safety and at least one gun, which at that time left exactly three off-the-shelf options, two of them low-risk – the F-4E and the Hurricane, both of them in service since 1967 – and one of the more daring kind, which was the Mirage F.4, still shy of its first flight. The single-engine Mirage F.1 and Saab Viggen were not considered at all. Luftwaffe Inspector General Rall leaned strongly towards the F-4E; it would be available earliest, have the lowest price tag, and have the same engine and gun as the F-104, making maintenance and spare part management easier. He even went so far as to enter unauthorized negotiations with McDonnell-Douglas in 1971, promising them a major order if the firm lobbied with the US government to lift the ban on possession of BVRAAMs still in place against Germany. This move went down badly with his superior, Defense Minister Helmut Schmidt, especially as there were allegations of kickback payments offered by McDonnell-Douglas to Rall and Schmidt himself if the deal went through. Although these were never verified, public opinion – in turmoil anyway, with major rallies against America’s war in Vietnam on a weekly basis – turned upon the F-4E deal when German news weekly Spiegel published the story. Schmidt assigned Rall to the NATO military committee and re-opened the selection process. This sparked a minor diplomatic crisis between Germany and the USA. The Nixon government officially declared that the ban on German BVRAAMs would only be lifted if they chose the Phantom. Chancellor Brandt, with some irritation, correctly declared that there never had been an official German request to lift the ban. Nixon privately fumed at the unreliability of that bozo Kraut who felt comfortable kneeling in front of the commies; this utterance became public at about the same time as the Watergate scandal, which in turn coincided with the first flight of the Mirage F.4. Nixon at that time was about as popular in Germany as Franco or the Shah, so the German government expected severe PR fallout if they succumbed to US blackmail after Nixon had personally insulted Brandt. Senior Luftwaffe personnel, including Rall’s successor Limberg and his predecessor Steinhoff, continued to lobby in favour of the F-4E, or at least the Hurricane; all had fought in the Second World War and held the French in deep contempt, considering them genetically unable to design something good enough for the Luftwaffe. Undeterred, Minister of Defense Schmidt, who had excellent connections to the French and was close friends with future President Giscard d’Estaing, selected the Mirage F.4 early in 1973 and placed an order over 264 machines, to equip eight fighter squadrons, a fighter trainer squadron and an OCU. Since Germany eschewed BVRAAMs, the Luftwaffe needed the best dogfighter, and the Mirage F.4 was better in that respect than either of the other two options. Politically, the decision was generally approved of, even by the more pro-American opposition. Franco-German reconciliation was popular, and not giving the Generals what they wanted was widely considered good politics in its own right.

With the German order, the 300-plane threshold was crossed, and Dassault set up series production. Since the Germans had made production possible in the first place, their order was prioritized over the South African one. Deliveries to Germany started in 1975, while the first South African plane was delivered in 1977. Both orders were fully processed in 1978. In 1976, the Thiarian Air Force ordered 80 machines to replace their obsolete T6L-4 Claiomhs. They were delivered in 1978 and 1979. By that time, Dassault offered the Mirage F.4 to several other NATO nations looking to replace the F-101 and the F-104; of eight bids, only one was successful. The F-101 users Italy, Turkey, Denmark and Portugal chose the cheaper Lockheed F-13 Starblazer in the single-mission fighter role, while the F-104 users Canada, Netherlands and Norway went for the more modern and multi-role capable F-18L Cobra. Only Belgium placed an order for a hundred Mirage F.4s in 1979, which were delivered in 1980 and 1981. Despite aggressive marketing and a liberal amount of bribery, no further orders for the Mirage F.4 came in. It was vastly more capable than the Mirage F.1, but apparently not what customers wanted. While Dassault built 492 Mirage F.4s for four air forces between 1975 and 1981, the company delivered 698 Mirage F.1s to eleven air forces between 1972 and 1987, mostly on account of the latter type’s lower price tag.

In German Service, the Mirage F.4 was usually armed with four Sidewinder missiles. Luftwaffe personnel had no high opinion of the type when it was introduced, but initial service experience would convince them otherwise. The only other NATO fighter whose flight performance was better than Mirage F.4s was the F-15A, and even for these, the small and nimble Mirage was a serious opponent if rules of engagement required visual identification, as they usually did in mock aerial combat. Lacking BVRAAMs, German pilots vigorously trained dogfights in Canada, against Canadian Hurricanes, F-5s and later F-18Ls; that arrangement was made in 1974 after the Nixon administration had cancelled the joint US-German flight training program in 1973 in retaliation for the failed Phantom deal. The Germans made use of Canada’s big surplus fleet of T-33 and CL-41 trainers, and when they took delivery of 160 Alpha Jet trainers from 1978, they would permanently station 72 of them in Canada and pay for another 72 which were handed over to the RCAF. Two squadrons of German Mirage F.4s also were permanently based in Canada, one of them functioning as an OCU and the other for aerial combat training.
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It took the Luftwaffe till 1980 to achieve FOC for all four operational Mirage F.4 wings. Apart from the introduction of a newer model of Sidewinder missiles and a new air-superiority paintjob in 1981, there were few modifications during the first ten years of service. The Mirage F-4’s petulant refusal to crash quickly gave it a good press (the Luftwaffe lost 291 F-104s in 25 years between 1963 and 1988, 200 of them in the first ten years, averaging 11 crashes per year; for the Mirage F.4, the figure was 14 accidental hull losses in 29 years between 1976 and 2005, averaging one crash every two years).
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During the Reagan Administration, the USA and Great Britain finally lifted the ban on German BVRAAMs, and an initial batch of 110 Mirage F.4s was modernized between 1985 and 1988 with a new radar and combat system, gaining the ablilty to fire AMRAAM missiles, which were delivered from 1989. As Germany was at that time developing the TF-90 Sturmvogel as a replacement for the Mirages when they reached 20 years of age after 1995, only 110 machines were so modernized; all others were only repainted.
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Devlopment delays of the Sturmvogel and the need to process export orders of the newer plane delayed replacement of all German Mirage F.4s till 2006, when the last operational squadron was refitted. German Mirage F.4s saw action over Yugoslavia during the 1998 war of dissolution after the Soviet Union had collapsed; there the type suffered its only combat loss in German service. Only three kills were scored (one MiG-21, one Orao and one helicopter), mainly because of restrictive rules of engagement. They also were deployed to the Baltic in 2002 through 2004 for air policing after the Baltic States had applied for NATO membership.

Most of the machines were in good shape when the type was retired. They had been popular with the armed forces and were lovingly maintained, and over fifty were retained on display at various places; a dozen went to museums, half of which remain in a flying condition till today. Twenty of the newest Mirage F.4s were disarmed and sold to a Swiss company providing OPFOR service to various European Air Forces on a contractual basis, along with a dozen older hulls for cannibalization. Of these, eighteen remain operational, piloted by former German and South African pilots.
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The South African Mirage F.4s had a much more active service life. They were engaged against Angolans and Cubans from day one till the end of the conflict in 1999. They dominated the skies in the initial phase, downing six Cuban MiG-21s and five Angolan F8L-3 Tearatoirns, plus several helicopters and transports. But when the 1977 arms embargo kicked in, they were unable to replenish their depleted stock of R.530 and R.550 missiles. They domestically copied the R.550, but that proved inadequate when the Angolans received Cuban MiG-23s with R-23 BVRAAMs in the early 1980s. The Cubans managed to shoot down seven Mirage F.4s from long range and usually could avoid close quarters combat (in the two instances they could not, the more maneuverable Mirages got the better of them).
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Although nobody would sell BVRAAMs to South Africa, they did acquire high-end Python-3 AAMs from Israel, with half again the range of their Magics and all-aspect capability; they also installed Israeli ECM systems able to bear R-23s seeker. With these modifications, they drew even with the Cubans for the remainder of the conflict, killing five MiG-23s with no own losses. After the war and the end of the Apartheid regime in 1994, the remaining Mirage F.4s were deployed with South African peacekeeping forces to various African countries. Hard service, lack of spare parts and jury-rigged repairs had left their mark on the South African Mirages; in 1995 and 1996, there were several crashes, and the fleet was twice grounded for some weeks. 35 remaining machines were retired at an average age of 22 years between 1998 and 2000, and replaced by T3S Siolpaires.
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The Belgian machines were not involved in any shooting war. Unlike the German Mirages, they were delivered with a full load of R.530 BVRAAMs.
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They also were adapted to fire AMRAAMs, starting in 1992. Of all Mirage F.4 users, the Belgians kept theirs longest. They started to replace their Mirage 50 strike fighters with Rafales in 2005 when they were 35 years old, and by the time the Mirage F.4s were in for replacement by a second batch of Rafales in 2015, they had the same age.
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The Thiarian contingent was barely operational, equipping a single fighter wing with three squadrons (4th, 22nd and 25th), when Argentina invaded Patagonia in 1982, and were on patrol around the clock when Britain’s huge armada steamed up to relieve the Patagonians; despite Argentine diplomatic and clandestine attempts to draw them in, a shooting war could be avoided.
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Shortly after, the Thiarians received new R.530F missiles for their Mirages, greatly extending their capabilities. In 1985, the Thiarians intervened in the first New Portugal rebellion; the Mirages used their excellent range to engage the Brazilians over the archiple from bases in mainland Thiaria and scored a dozen kills against enemy jet fighters, half of them Hurricanes. They lost seven hulls, two to enemy fighters, two in crashes and three to SAMs.
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Although the Thiarians introduced the R.530D missile when they received their first Mirage 4000s in 1988, they never upgraded their Mirage F.4s to carry them. They went to war against Brazil again in the second New Portugal rebellion of 1997, which would bring about the archiple’s full independence, but performed only second-line duties behind the Air Force’s Mirage 4000s and the Navy’s Siolpaires; they scored three kills, two of them MPAs, and suffered one loss by accident. After that war, the Thiarians used the Mirage F.4 to trial the Mica missile they acquired from France since 1999.
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They were replaced on schedule with Mirage 4000F interceptors between 2006 and 2008, at an average age of 28 years. Four Thiarian machines are the only ones remaining in a flying condition; another 50 are displayed in various museums or as gate guardians.

Cheers
GD

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