For some reason my Mirage family avatar appears vertically compressed, and for some other reason I can't upload the other Mirage picture I want to have as my avatar.
But maybe this is interesting to our members. My new avatar is a deHavilland Venom. It was a much improved successor to the first British single-jet fighter, the Vampire. It had a tremendous rate of climb and a very high service ceiling. When in mock combat against F-86 Sabres, we could dive on them from high altitude and then climb back to safety, like Hellcats or Lightnings attacking Zeros, and we could also turn inside them in a dogfight. At the end they had to dive away, but then they couldn't climb up higher than us. It was funny to be following your faster prey when you know that even if you're behind you're gaining on altitude all the time. A similar thing happened on long distance ferrying, we could cruise higher and faster than the Sabres, although our straight wings held us back in maximum speed, something the fighter jocks know isn't as important as it seems. And this was with the tip tanks you see on the picture. In real combat we would eject our empty tip tanks and then the Sabres would be in even bigger trouble.