Dassault Mirage IIIV
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| Mirage IIIV | |
|---|---|
| Type | VTOL fighter aircraft |
| Manufacturer | Dassault Aviation |
| Maiden flight | February 1965 |
| Primary user | French Air Force |
| Produced | 1965-1966 |
| Number built | 2 |
The Dassault Mirage IIIV (three vee) fighter aircraft was one of the most interesting offshoots of the Dassault Mirage III family tree. A vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) fighter, the IIIV featured eight small vertical lift jets straddling the main engine. The design was in response to a mid-1960s NATO specification for a VTOL strike fighter.
Contents |
[edit] Balzac
To test the lift-engine concept, Dassault modified the first Mirage III prototype. Eight Rolls-Royce RB-108 lift engines were added, each with a thrust of 9.6 kN (2,160 lbf). It made its first hover flights in October 1962, with its first transition from vertical to horizontal flight in March 1963.
The name was not actually given to the aircraft in honour of the French literary figure. As the machine was the first Mirage III, it was serial-numbered "001", and at the time there was a French movie advertising agency (Publicité Jean Mineur) that widely publicised its phone number, "BALZAC 0-0-1". The Balzac crashed in January 1964. The pilot was killed, but the aircraft was repaired, only to crash in September 1965 and be permanently destroyed, killing another pilot in the process. A major contributing factor to both crashes was held to be the inordinate amount of drag created by the deployment of the many lift engine intake/exhaust doors during transition.
[edit] NATO competition
Four designs were submitted, the Mirage IIIV design, the Fokker US-Republic D.24 Alliance, the BAC 584 and the Hawker P.1154, to NATO in January 1962 in competition for the AC/169 specification for a supersonic V/STOL strike fighter to meet NATO Basic Military Requirement 3. In May that year the resulting judgement that the P.1154 was the technically superior, but when considering as well the financing and work-sharing opportunities the Mirage IIIV was judged its equal in merit. NATO was not in the position to fund the full development of either winner leaving it up to the individual member countries.
[edit] Mirage
In the meantime, the Balzac had led to the actual Mirage IIIV, which was twice as big. Two prototypes were built. The first Mirage IIIV performed its first hovering trial in February 1965. The IIIV had the general layout of earlier Mirage fighters, but it was longer and had a bigger wing, and, like the Balzac, nine engines: a single SNECMA-modified Pratt & Whitney JTF10 turbofan, designated TF104, with thrust of 61.8 kN (13,900 lbf), and eight Rolls-Royce RB162-1 engines, each with thrust of 15.7 kN (3,525 lbf), mounted vertically in pairs around the centreline. The TF-104 was originally evaluated on a special-built trials machine, the Mirage IIIT, which was much like a Mirage IIIC except for the change in engine fit.
The TF104 engine was quickly replaced by an upgraded TF106 engine, with thrust of 74.5 kN (16,750 lbf), before the first prototype made its initial transition to forward flight in March 1966. It later attained Mach 1.32 in test flights.
The second prototype featured a TF30 turbofan for forward thrust of 82.4 kN (18,500 lbf), and first flew in June 1966. In September of that year, it attained Mach 2.04 in level flight, but was lost in an accident on 28 November 1966.
The loss of the second prototype effectively killed the program, and in fact killed any prospect of an operational Mach 2 vertical take-off fighter for decades. The British Hawker P.1154 had been cancelled in 1965 by the government just as the prototypes were being built, though its subsonic brother, the Hawker-Siddeley Kestrel VTOL attack aircraft was flying in tri-partite trials with the UK, US and West Germany. The French preferred the Mirage IIIV, and the international cooperation needed to make the P.1154 a reality never materialized.
Some of the P.1154 work contributed to the final operational vertical take-off fighter based on the Kestrel, the highly successful Harrier. The Mirage IIIV was never a realistic combat aircraft. The eight lift engines would likely have been a maintenance nightmare, and certainly their weight imposed a severe range and payload penalty on the aircraft. Apparently the program was all but dead even before the loss of the second prototype.
A piece of the technology of the IIIV was re-used in the extremely successful Mirage IIIF, later Mirage F1. The cockpit and ancillary electronics found a home in what has become one of the most successful French interceptors after the illustrious Mirage III.
[edit] Specifications (Mirage IIIV)
General characteristics
- Crew: 1
- Length: 16.30 m (53 ft 6 in)
- Wingspan: 8.80 m (28 ft 10 in)
- Height: m (ft)
- Wing area: ()
- Empty weight: 6,750 kg (14,880 lb)
- Powerplant:
- 1× Pratt & Whitney TF106 turbofan, 17,600 lbf (78.5) kN
- 8× RollsRoyce RB162 turbofans, 4,400 lbf (19.6 kN) each
Performance
- Maximum speed: (Mach 2)
For an explanation of the units and abbreviations in this list, please see Wikipedia:WikiProject Aircraft/Units key.
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