Streched Mirage - Fact or Fiction?

[Wokkafans]

Very briefly met with a chap tonight in Tel Aviv who claimed to be an ex aircraft designer. Through his broken English he told me that he had been involved in a project to produce a stretched Mirage for the Israeli Air Force. The background to this was that due to an embargo by the French the IAF was unable to obtain replacement engines for their Mirages. Their solution was to source engines from the US. The problem with this was that the new engines were longer than the originals so they lengthened the fuselage with a cut and shut. The lengthened fuselage, however, had a changed COG and handling dynamics - their solution was to place canards on the aircraft. Is this actually true or BS.

Cheers

WF

[S76Heavy]

That would have been the IAI Kfir, temporarily the F21 in USAF Agressor squadrons.

[ORAC]

See Wiki - the IAI Kfir. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAI_Kfir)

[JFZ90]

The following book...

Amazon.com: Mirage (9780749300036): James Follett: Books (http://www.amazon.com/Mirage-James-Follett/dp/0749300035)

...is fiction, but based on the facts behind the Kfir story. Must be 10 years ago, but recall its not a bad read.

I remember some suggestion that having the plans was not necessarily enough when it came to e.g. the metallurgy of the engines etc. - they had to acquire & master technologies in the broadest sense to pull it off

[Wokkafans]

Thanks chaps - I'll check it out when I get back to the UK. I would have liked to have had more time with him as he said he had been very senior in the design team and had been involved in many IAF projects.

WF

[TEEEJ]

The Wiki entry is very misleading. The Israeli's weren't building the Nesher (Mirage), but simply assembling them from knockdown kits supplied by France. Gene Salvay an engineer with Rockwell and involved in the Kfir design revealed the details in Wings magazine during 2000.

Salvay revealed that he was the Chief designer of the Kfir (Mirage variant fitted with J79 engine). The embargo on the Mirage 5Js that ended up being absorbed by the French Air Force was just a show. The Mirage 5 in kit form were being supplied by the French through the back door as fast as US transports could deliver them.

IAI Nesher 501 on display in Israel has French manufacture plates.

David Lednicer who took the image also knew Gene Salvay and spoke to him in a telephone conversation to confirm the French supplied kit story.

The following link should take you to the rec.aviation.military thread on Google Groups

MiG-21 combat record? - rec.aviation.military | Google Groups (http://groups.google.com/group/rec.aviation.military/browse_thread/thread/d9086a710a9f51f4/f9d0a855bd192852?hl=en&lnk=gst&q=David+Lednicer+nesher#f9d0a855bd192852)

Falklands/Argentine Aircraft - rec.aviation.military | Google Groups (http://groups.google.com/group/rec.aviation.military/browse_thread/thread/5712e96936287fbe/c55389cd785f1f2e?hl=en&lnk=gst&q=David+Lednicer+nesher#c55389cd785f1f2e)

David Lednicer wrote

'Evidence that has been unearthed indicates that the Neshers were
manufacured in France and assembled in Israel. I have inspected the
remains of one of the Argentine Daggers, in a British museum and it is
filled with French made components.'

Photos: Dassault Mirage 5J (Nesher) Aircraft Pictures | Airliners.net (http://www.airliners.net/photo/Israel---Air/Dassault-Mirage-5J/0798878/L/)

'Despite the official story that this is an IAI Nesher, a check of the aircraft ID plates in the wheel wells reveals that this is really the first production Dassault Mirage 5J. On display in the Israel Air Force Museum.'

TJ

[Squirrel 41]

Or:

No, not a Mirage - very definitely real!

Hat, coat, etc...

S41

[Pontius Navigator]

Thread drift, but when the Labour Government cancelled the SAAF order for 32 Buccaneer after 16 had been delivered, there was a rumour that they were also supplied with 16 complete ship-sets of spares. Truth or fiction?

[Martin the Martian]

The J79 used by the Kfir was actually shorter and heavier than the Atar of the Mirage. According to Shlomo Alani in his article on the Kfir in International Air Power Review vol.15 the interior of the Mirage's fuselage was heavily modified, essentially because the Mirage's structure was not designed to cope with the heat of the J79. The Israelis replaced certain aluminium structures that would be subject to high temperatures with titanium, added thermal blankets to the engine and used cooling airflow. The engine attachment points were redesigned and strengthened and the internal diameter of the engine bay was enlarged. But there were no external changes to the fuselage to accomodate the J79, and certainly no stretching of the fuselage.

The Kfir was a lot heavier than the Mirage, with no change to the wing area. As a result manoeuvrability was affected and the centre of gravity was moved forward. The design team concluded that aerodynamic alterations would be more suitable rather than increased thrust, and the canard was fitted, along with leading edge dog tooth extensions and a strake either side of the nose. This improved the Kfir tremendously, both in agility and handling.

With regard to whether the Nesher was assembled or built in Israel, Alani notes that Dassault were very keen to pursue the Israeli order for Mirage 5Js, despite the French government's position, and had production tooling shipped out to Israel. In France the aircraft were built, stored, and eventually entered service with the French Air Force as the Mirage 5F. The money paid by Israel was eventually returned. I have no doubt that a lot of components made their way out to Israel, but I think that much of the structure was fabricated in Israel itself. Otherwise, production of the Kfir would have been far less straightforward.

[dalek]

1969
Memory may be a bit vague, but I am reasonably certain I taxied out behind a Mirage with swing wings and two engines??

[BossEyed]

dalek - Mirage G (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dassault_Mirage_G). Did not enter production.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/aa/Dassault_Mirage_G8.jpg/300px-Dassault_Mirage_G8.jpg

[STANDTO]

and so was born the MRCA

[bakseetblatherer]

Whoa, that looks like a Tornado and F111 love child!

[BEagle]

No, Mirage G begat the AFVG!

I'm sure that there was more than a hint of the English Electric P17A about the early MRCA designs....

[dalek]

Thanks Bosseyed. I was at Istres at the time which was the French equivalent of Farnborough / Boscombe.
Our Int Officer at Thorney told me that the Mirage 3G only had one engine and I was seeing things

[Martin the Martian]

Further reading indicates that a fuselage stretch was applied rather later in the Israeli delta line, in the 1990s, when IAI were offering a vastly updated Kfir for export. They looked to use the F404 and modern radar avionics, and a fuselage plug was inserted just aft of the cockpit. It was called the Nammer, and though it never got any further than a proposal, some design work was completed. Some elements of the Nammer, though not the fuselage extension or the F404, were incorporated into Kfirs exported to South America.

Would have been interesting to see what the Nammer would have been like in air-air combat.

[XV277]

IAI Nesher 501 on display in Israel has French manufacture plates.

Photos: Dassault Mirage 5J (Nesher) Aircraft Pictures | Airliners.net (http://www.airliners.net/photo/Israel---Air/Dassault-Mirage-5J/0798878/L/)

'Despite the official story that this is an IAI Nesher, a check of the aircraft ID plates in the wheel wells reveals that this is really the first production Dassault Mirage 5J. On display in the Israel Air Force Museum.'

TJ



Alternate senario - the Israelis copied everything, even down to the data plate and all Neshers had the data plate from the first Mirage VJ:suspect:

It would be interesting to see what the data plates on the SAAF Cheetah Cs say (there being more Cheetahs than the South Africans had Mirage IIIs)

[Martin the Martian]

A number of Cheetahs had indeed lived earlier lives wearing the Star of David before they were reincarnated in South Africa. Unsurprisingly, nobody seems willing to put a number to them.

[zoomdoof]

There is a rather good coverage over the whole programme pertaining to the various Cheetah variants available here:IPMS South Africa - DENEL Aviation Cheetah (http://newsite.ipmssa.za.org/content/view/153/28/1/1/) it does not go into the sources of the airframes, but in a book by Winston Brent "Cheetah, Guardians of the Nation", mention is made of the source of the Cheetah C frames, no reference is however made to the actual build numbers other than for the Cheetah B's, i.e. converted Miraged 111 B's to Cheetah D standard, however even in the SAAF the various frames where commonly referred to as their origin source frames i.e. 'B', D's and D2's.

To try and incorporate as much avionics into the restricted airframe, all three variants of the Cheetah had different fuselage plugs added, in th case of the D's this was in front of the cockpit, just before the nose cone, while in the C's this was a plug of about 0.5m just behind the cockpit.
It coud be that the source mentioned in the very first post was referring to this 'strech' in the frame.