FD AU 2

Hello again!

After drawing the Mirage G.8, my imagination went a little berserk. Enjoy!

Mirage F.8 Air-Superiority Fighter
[ img ]

When the Mirage G.8 was under development in the late 1960s, the German Air Force was looking for a new fighter to replace at least part of their F-104G fleet, which had - mostly due to faulty pilot training, which however was not mentioned publicly - accumulated over 200 crashes in less than ten years and acquired a truly gruesome reputation. Although the single-engine configuration of the F-104 had nothing to do with the crash series, the Luftwaffe was adamant that the new fighter must have twin engines. This narrowed the choice effectively down to the F-4 - and the Mirage G.8. The latter however had the poor dogfighting qualities typical for most swing-wing designs, and was not realistically considered by the Germans when it first flew in 1971, at a time where maneuverability was considered a jet fighters prime asset. As reservations about the Mirage G's lack of agility had been voiced since the first flight of the single-engined version in 1967, Dassault had told his engineers to develop a fixed-wing version of the G.8 simultaneously. Due to the lack of interest on part of the Armée de l'Air, the fixed-wing version Mirage F.8 was still on the drawing-board in 1971, but the existence of the project was publicly known. When the Germans were already finalizing their deal with McDonnell-Douglas early in 1972, Dassault - who was desperate to find a launch customer after official French interest in the Mirage G.8 was waning as well - offered the Mirage F.8 to Germany on extremely generous terms. He not only undercut the price charged by McDonnell-Douglas, but also offered the Germans a full production license for half the order, thus providing valuable technology transfer and employment for the still fledgling German post-war aviation industry. Although this move was not politically motivated, it earned Dassault some scathing criticism in France; the Germans however jumped at it with unexpected vigour. The social democrat government of Willy Brandt owed its ascension to power in 1969 - among many other factors - to the protest wave against US policy in general and the Vietnam war in particular during 1969; his defense minister Helmut Schmidt on the other hand enjoyed good connections with the French. Both were determined to give Dassault a chance and in April 1972 agreed to suspend negotiations with McDonnell-Douglas and defer the decision about Germany's new air superiority fighter for one year; by that time, they wanted to see a flying prototype. Since construction of the prototype was already well underway in 1972, Dassault got it airborne in January 1973, well inside the specified timeframe. The machine not only looked gorgeously, but also performed convincingly, achieving a western European speed record of Mach 2,40 within seven months after her first flight. The leading officers of the Luftwaffe, most of whose generals had fought in the second world war and held the French in deep contempt, were outspokenly in favour of the F-4; they argued that the Luftwaffe already had 88 F-4E recce planes, which would make the introduction of any other type than the F-4 as new standard fighter a logistical folly of the first grade. The perference of the F-4 by Germany's military elite lulled the directors of McDonnell-Douglas; they did not realize that not giving the officers what they wanted was considered a political objective in its own right for the then ruling German Social Democrats. They realized even less that giving Richard Nixon what he wanted could lose elections in Germany at that time; with the Watergate scandal fully published, he was about as popular in Germany as Leonid Brezhnev. Nevertheless, McDonnell-Douglas asked the Nixon government to apply political pressure upon Germany to push the deal through. Nixon did just that, but his intervention became public in Germany in November 1973, likely revealed by the East German spy Guillaume, who worked as Chancellor Brandt's personal aide at that time. The press reports about Nixon's personal intervention made sure that the German government was all but forced to make a public show of rebuffing him; the F-4 deal was effectively dead by new year's day 1974. By that time, Dassault had three more prototypes of the Mirage F.8 ready, two of them with the new SNECMA M53 engine, and flight testing continued with a vengeance. The Germans, who wanted to get rid of their Starfighter interceptors as quickly as possible, signed a deal covering delivery of 175 M53-powered Mirage F.8s in March 1974. As originally offered by Dassault, the first 40 machines were to be delivered whole from France, the next 45 as kits to be assembled in Germany and the final 90 were to be license-produced by VFW; VFW and Dornier were also contracted to deliver some parts for all 175 aircraft (150 single-seat and 25 twin-seat). Deliveries commenced in mid-1975 and were complete in early 1979. The Mirage F.8 equipped four fighter wings and one dedicated OCU squadron. It remained unpopular with the senior Luftwaffe leadership in the first few years; the people actually flying and servicing her however came to like the Mirage F.8 within short time, mostly on account of her excellent flying characteristics - with their powerful engines (95 kN with reheat), their huge wings with correspondingly low wing load and their large control surfaces and tail fins, they were second only to the F-15 in speed and maneuverability - and their petulant refusal to crash (no losses at all during the 70s and only six during the 80s, as opposed to the F-104, of which an average of 10 had fallen from the sky each year during their service with the Luftwaffe). Pilot training initially took part in Germany and Portugal, but was relocated to the USA in 1980. Although the Ford administration had revoked the agreement with Germany to train the F-4 pilots in the USA after the F-4 deal had busted, the Carter administration was willing to renew it after the new German Chancellor Schmidt had whipped his party into a more pro-American stance and had become a main supporter of NATO's new double-track nuclear strategy. The F.8 remained a purely defensive fighter without radar-guided AAMs till 1988; by that time, the NATO allies trusted West Germany enough to lift the restriction on possessing BVRAAMs, and a major refit programme to integrate the latest version of the APG-65 radar and the AIM-120 missile was launched in 1985. During this refit, the Mirage F.8 also received improved air-to-ground capabilities including the ability to fire Maverick AGMs. 110 of the 169 remaining machines were refitted, with the first ones re-delivered in 1990 and the last ones in 1994. The number of fighter wings had been reduced to three in 1993, and the surplus machines were stored to provide spare parts. By that time, the Typhoon had already had its first flight, and few people imagined that the Mirage F.8 would remain in service for another 19 years, which prevented any further upgrades. In the event, the stored machines were mostly used up for cannibalization.

[ img ]

Greetings
GD

Shipbucket

Who is online