AHC: an 1-engined Mach-2 fighter for the RAF

Leaving aside that the Avon Mirage was developed to pre-production but not sold in quantity how would Britain benefit from exports of the Avon Mirage? The benefits would go to France apart from the engines, which were exported in good numbers in Lightings and Hunter FGA9s.

There is a story (that may even be true) that the reason the Atar won out for the Mirage IIIO was some deliberate misconversion of francs to pounds in terms of projected costs by the French. . .
 

Wimble Toot

Banned
You's swap a radar equipped fighter for a radarless attack aircraft?

What was the Gannet AEW plane for?

To be quite frank, 1950s and 60s jets crashed. It's what they did.

The DH.110 had already crashed in front of the worlds media and top brass of most air forces. Why, in this case, did the Ministry of Supply decided charred corpses was what the Royal Navy needed?
 
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Archibald

Banned
That makes me wonder how the Fairey Delta could have been developed.

Had the RAF bought 160 Fairey Delta 2 powered by Avon engines instead of 160 Hunter FGA Mk 9/FR 10s could we have had a Spey powered Fairey Delta 3 in the second half of the 1960s, possibly built for the RAF instead of the Harrier and Jaguar? Could that have been followed by the Fairey Delta 4 with FBW and an RB.199 engine?

Let's consider that interesting bird, the Mirage III-NG, flown in December 1982. It is really the ultimate evolution of the Mirage III. It is a derivative of the Mirage 50 (1979).
http://www.caea.info/fr/?option=com...lt-mirage-iii-ng-50-m&catid=37:avio-de-combat

The Mirage III-NG had
- A Mirage V / Mirage 50 airframe, which was lighter with more fuel than the early Mirage III C/E
- Mirage 2000 fly-by-wire, except it was less efficient since the old airframe was not unstable enough (the 2000 had FBW from the craddle, it was born unstable)
- Mirage F1 and Super Etendard advanced avionics, air-to-air and air-to-ground (something the Jaguar never had)
- A Mirage F1 Atar 9K50 with 7200 kgp, the most powerful ATAR ever
- and on top of that, the Kfir canards with some LERX added to the delta wing.

dassault_mirage-3ng.gif


In a nutshell, a Mirage III airframe with all the goodies developped for the Mirage V, Jaguar, F1, Super Etendard, Kfir, and Mirage 2000 !

Unfortunately no market was found for it.
now lets imagine that France had been poorer (to, say, Chili GDP level, between 1960 and 1990) and thus unable to fund a successor to the Mirage III until the Rafale.

Then the Mirage III airframe could have handled, by itself, the jobs of the Mirage F1, Jaguar, and part of the Mirage 2000. Plus a touch of the Super Etendard: no carrier capable, but it could loft a pair of Exocets underwing.
As for better engine, bar the 9K50, the Kfir got a J79, Avon was tested on the IIIO.
Since the Mirage III-T swallowed an entire TF-30 (1240 mm diameter), the smaller M53 (1055 mm) could have very well fitted into a Mirage III - although it was never done.
The Mirage F1 fuselage was pretty close from a Mirage V.
 
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More Meteors and Canberras crashed in simulated asymmetric engine-out training than in actual asymmetric engine out flying. Also, when one Meteor in a flight runs out of gas, so do his buddies. They ran out of gas a lot. Crummy British weather.
 
More Meteors and Canberras crashed in simulated asymmetric engine-out training than in actual asymmetric engine out flying. Also, when one Meteor in a flight runs out of gas, so do his buddies. They ran out of gas a lot. Crummy British weather.

The Meteor was apparently almost impossible to fly on one engine, especially if you lost one during landing.

The four in one day was down to fuel - airfields fogged in and the entire flight went down before they could find anywhere they could get in.
 
What was the Gannet AEW plane for?

Not for intercepting Bears and Badgers, which was one the Sea Vixen's roles. Airborne Early Warning and Air Intercept radar aren't the same thing


The DH.110 had already crashed in front of the worlds media and top brass of most air forces. Why, in this case, did the Ministry of Supply decided charred corpses was what the Royal Navy needed?

Perhaps because the reason for the crash was determined and rectified? By the time it became the Sea Vixen a lot of redesigning and modification had happened to the original DH.110. By your reasoning the F-14 should not have entered service because one of its prototypes crashed. As others have stated, loss rates in that era were high across the board, the Sea Vixen was no exception.
 

Archibald

Banned
My point was to have the ER-103C evolve up to the Mirage III-NG level.

This mean two rules
a) the RAF buys no other aircraft until the 90's and a new type (let's say something like Grippen)
b) that includes no Bucc / TSR-2 class aircraft

So how does the bird evolves ?

1958: Mk.1 pure interceptor (think Mirage IIIC)
1963: Mk.2 all weather strike ( think Mirage IIIE, conventional and nuclear strike)
1968: Mk.3 cheap clear weather strike (think Mirage V or French Jaguars)
1974: Mk.4 multirole fighter (think Mirage F1)
1982: Mk.5 canards and CDVE (think Mirage 2000 / Mirage III-NG)

Mk.4 and Mk.5 replace all other types by 1985. They can remain in service well until 2000.

As for the engine, Avon for the 1/2/3, Spey for the 4/5.

that aircraft can replace everything from Hunter to Canberra, including Harrier, Jaguar, Lightning. With in-flight refueling it can replace Phantoms, and Bucc' and all the others in the long range strike role.

That's how the AdA proceded in the days before the Rafale. Including GW1.

Tornado-class long range bomb trucks were considered many times, but bar the special case of the Mirage IV, never happened (only 62 Mirage IVs were build and were replaced by ballistic missiles or tactical aircrafts like the 2000N)
 
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There is a story (that may even be true) that the reason the Atar won out for the Mirage IIIO was some deliberate misconversion of francs to pounds in terms of projected costs by the French. . .

As I understand it, it was a difference between Australian and British pounds that when discovered lowered the price. I can't nail down the story though, so it might be bullshit.

Edit: the Aus pound was pegged at .8 of the British pound, but I don't know how that explains the mixup.
 
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How did Britain benefit from overseas sales of the Lightning? The TSR-2? The P.1154? The AFVG?

Export of the Lightning, Harrier, Buccaneer provided much needed foreign currency for the balance of payments, larger production runs for aircraft and spares thus lowering the overall programme cost for Britain and the political influence that comes with being an exporter of major capital equipment.
 

Wimble Toot

Banned
By the by, the USAF's F-15 are just short of averaging three crashes and almost two pilots a year without even trying to land it on a carrier the size of a pool table.

In the worlds biggest (second biggest?) airforce, that's a good attrition rate.
 
The RN looked into the 2 seat, Spey powered Crusader in competition with the Phantom and chose the Phantom because of its much larger radar, larger weapons fit, longer endurance and 2 engine safety.
And ended up with an aircraft that was too large to operate from most their carriers and even after significant modifications to but it and the carrier was marginal at best for the clapped out Ark Royal.
 

Wimble Toot

Banned
Export of the Lightning, Harrier, Buccaneer provided much needed foreign currency

I'm sure those Kuwaiti dinars and South Africa rands were welcomed by the Bank of England.

The only currency that mattered ($) was extracted by the AV-8A. And the Canberra. Considering the amount of Sterling flowing in the other direction, I suspect nobody even noticed.
 

Wimble Toot

Banned
The Meteor was apparently almost impossible to fly on one engine, especially if you lost one during landing

My late uncle flew the Armstrong Whitworth night fighter NF12, which was hard to fly on two engines, let alone one, according to him
 

Wimble Toot

Banned
I wasn't aware XP924/GCVIX had crashed previously in it's lifetime

A nosewheel collapse in 2012 isn't a crash (heaven forbid) , and a complete hydraulic failure and belly-landing after an overhaul is just normal operating procedure, and a lucky escape as far Sea Vixen crew were concerned.

The company that owned her unsurprisingly went bankrupt, and she was sold to the Royal Navy Historic Flight for £1.

After appearing at ONE airshow, she bellied in at Yeovilton in May 2017, and without at least a million pounds of someone else's money, it will never fly again.

The scrapman's torch awaits.
 
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Wimble Toot

Banned
Thanks - you are correct. The Aussies liked the performance but got their fingers burnt with the re-engined F86 and wouldn't go for it.

Apparently there was a Spey-engined variant, the Mirage IIIK, but it was a paper aeroplane only, so we were both wrong!

So it goes.
 
that aircraft can replace everything from ... Canberra, ....Phantoms, and Bucc' ....

Tornado-class long range bomb trucks ....
Are all four of these not significantly bigger and more powerful aircraft? I cant see them being replaced by a Mirage III unless you accept big reductions in ability. The Canberra is also 10 years earlier than Mirage III and 12 of your MK2.
 
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