GreenKnight121
Senior Airman
- 611
- Mar 16, 2014
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"City of Hobart". A missed opportunity... do you know what makes this aircraft so special?
The horror story of the Australian Mirage is something that I always wonder about.
Cost issues for instance over the use of the Avon. Australia already used the Avon in their version of the Sabre so any additional cost would almost certainly have been more than balanced out by cheaper training and support costs.
Performance. I haven't been able to find out in detail what the difference was but understand that the Avon powered aircraft was faster, had a much better climb, shorter field length, gun firing ceiling was over 10,000 ft higher, better combat manoeuvrability and approx 20% longer range. To counter this French offered the more powerful Atar 9K engine, but never delivered it.
Radar the Ferranti Airpass 2 multi mode radar was superior to the French Cyrano
Cannons The RAAF used the DEFTA not the Aden already in use in the Sabre. This resulted in ammunition problems as the RAAF spent A$519,000 on Ammunition as the French never gave them the licence to produce their own ammunition, whereas Australia had been producing Aden ammunition for years without any problems.
As I said a real horror story
There is no doubt that you are correct in what you say, but from a cost and performance perspective it was a horror story for the RAAFHorror story sounds like an exaggeration - the Mirage III was one of the most successful combat aircraft of the Cold war era.
Some of the original Mirage III purchased by the Australians are still actively flying today in the Pakistani Air Force - they most be up to 50 years old?
Mind you - Mirage III had a very poor safety record in Australian service - lots of crashes and write-offs
And why it was called the Mirage IIIO....
Well, it's Avon powered - whereas we eventually went with the Atar.
A missed opportunity - some sources say no - claiming "the performance advantages of the Avon were not sufficiently great to warrant the extra expense and the engineering problems that would go with it."
There was also the an "accounting error" on SNECMA's behalf that tipped the scales in favour of the Atar. Have you heard that story?
According to the Australian Serials & RAAF History sites:The horror story of the Australian Mirage is something that I always wonder about.
Cost issues for instance over the use of the Avon. Australia already used the Avon in their version of the Sabre so any additional cost would almost certainly have been more than balanced out by cheaper training and support costs.
Performance. I haven't been able to find out in detail what the difference was but understand that the Avon powered aircraft was faster, had a much better climb, shorter field length, gun firing ceiling was over 10,000 ft higher, better combat manoeuvrability and approx 20% longer range. To counter this French offered the more powerful Atar 9K engine, but never delivered it.
Radar the Ferranti Airpass 2 multi mode radar was superior to the French Cyrano
Cannons The RAAF used the DEFTA not the Aden already in use in the Sabre. This resulted in ammunition problems as the RAAF spent A$519,000 on Ammunition as the French never gave them the licence to produce their own ammunition, whereas Australia had been producing Aden ammunition for years without any problems.
As I said a real horror story
A French Mirage IIIC, known as "City of Hobart", was fitted with an RB146 Avon 67 RA.29 (mk301) turbojet which produced 12,100 lbs thrust (15,715 lbs w/reheat), and flew on February 13 1961. This was known as a Mirage IIIO, but did not receive an RAAF serial number as, although the Avon delivered superior performance over the SNECMA Atar 9C [9,430 lbs thrust (13,670 lbs w/reheat)], it did not have a clear advantage over the under-development Atar-9K [11,023 lbs thrust (15,870 lbs w/reheat)], so the Atar was chosen on 17 May 1961. As it turned out, the -9K was experiencing delays by the time the RAAF Mirage III was ready to begin production, so the -9C was fitted in all RAAF Mirage IIIs produced. The higher cost of the Avon ($46.9 million vs $44.9 million for the initial 30-aircraft contract) was not very significant.