Mitch Williamson is a technical writer with an interest in military and naval affairs. He has published articles in Cross & Cockade International and Wartime magazines. He was research associate for the Bio-history Cross in the Sky, a book about Charles 'Moth' Eaton's career, in collaboration with the flier's son, Dr Charles S. Eaton. He also assisted in picture research for John Burton's Fortnight of Infamy.
Mitch is now publishing on the WWW various specialist websites combined with custom website design work. He enjoys working for and supporting his local C3 Church.
The Lavochkin La-11 was designed from the successful Lavochkin La-9 series of piston engine fighters with the difference being that the La-11 was to be a long-range bomber escort. The system was under development in the closing years of World War 2 but was not made ready for service until 1947. In effect, the Lavochkin La-11 became one of the last dedicated piston engine fighters to be produced for the Soviet Air Force and played upon the strengths of the preceding design quite well, though it arrived at a time when the jet age was becoming all the technological rage.
Design of the La-11 followed suit with the preceding La-9 series featuring a stout engine housing with large propeller hub, low monoplane wing assembly and mid-set framed cockpit offering up a decent view with traditional blind spots. Armament consisted of a battery of 3 x 23mm Nudelman-Suranov NS-23 series cannons which were more than capable of engaging enemy aircraft. Power was derived from a single Shvetsov ASh-82FNV radial piston engine producing some 1,870 horsepower and helping the La-11 achieve speeds nearing 420 miles per hour.
The prototype La-11 appeared in two forms as the La-123 and the La-134D. The former was based highly on the La-9 but sported just three cannons as its offensive armament. The latter was an improved La-123 prototype sporting an increased fuel capacity and underwing fuel drop tanks. As the development of the type evolved more and more options related to long-range sorties were introduced to make the pilot's job more comfortable. These options included a more cushioned seat, built-in urine waste facilities, arm and head rests. Communications and navigation equipment were also brought up to modern speed.
At the conclusion of development, it was found that the La-11 was quite a heavier aircraft from the original La-9. This limited the aircrafts combat capabilities above 23,000 feet but still played upon the long-range performance inherent in the new design. Despite this shortcoming, the La-11 was a good performer especially well into missions when fuel consumption would naturally lighten the La-11's load.
Lavochkin La-11's were featured int he years leading up and into the Korean War. During this time, the La-11 was credited with several American kills of note including that of a 10-man Privateer type aircraft. Its long range was duly noted though the La-11's limited combat ceiling and slow rate of climb did little against the high-flying Boeing B-29 Superfortresses dotting the skies in the conflict. In any case, the La-11 represented a changing time but it still remained a capable aircraft designed to a specific role and carried out its functions appropriately. Total production numbered some 1,182 examples and the aircraft was also fielded by China and North Korea.
Specifications (La-11)
General characteristics
* Crew: 1
* Length: 8.62 m (28 ft 3 in)
* Wingspan: 9.80 m (32 ft 2 in)
* Height: 3.47 m (11 ft 5 in)
* Wing area: 17.6 m² (189 ft²)
* Empty weight: 2,770 kg (6,107 lb)
* Loaded weight: 3,730 kg (8,223 lb)
* Max takeoff weight: 3,996 kg (8,810 lb)
* Powerplant: 1× Shvetsov ASh-82FN air-cooled radial engine with a two-stage supercharger and fuel injection, 1,380 kW (1,850 hp)
Performance
* Maximum speed: 674 km/h (419 mph) at altitude
* Range: 2,235 km (1,388 mi)
* Service ceiling: 10,250 m (33,628 ft)
* Rate of climb: 758 m/min (2,487 ft/min)
* Wing loading: 212 kg/m² (44 lb/ft²)
* Power/mass: 0.37 kW/kg (0.23 hp/lb)
Armament
* 3 × 23 mm Nudelman-Suranov NS-23 cannons, 75 rounds/gun
This idealized picture of the Captain off Gibraltar illustrates the high regard in which the public held the ship and her designer, Captain Cowper Coles, who lost his life when she went down a few months later.
HMS Devastation the first mastless battleship designed by Sir Edward Reed. While her breastwork layout and low freeboard might have made her unsuitable for ocean fighting) she was well adapted to defence and attack of naval bases) which figured prominently in 1870s strategy.
The development whose first manifestation occurred in the American Civil War was the turret-ship. This was a concept which turned out to be much sounder than the ram. The idea of mounting the ship's heaviest gun or guns on a turntable that could rotate to fire on any bearing except, of course, where it would interfere with the structure of one's own ship had occurred to designers other than Ericsson, notably Captain Cowper Coles of the Royal Navy. Coles's turret design, with the gun mounting rotating on a roller path, was inherently better than Ericsson's which turned on a central stalk, and it was incorporated in a Danish warship, the Rolf Krake, in the mid 1860s, and not long after in a radically modified British line-of-battle ship, the Royal Sovereign. This ship was for experimental purposes only but much was learnt.
Not, however, enough. An argument broke out between Coles and the Admiralty authorities as to the best design for a full-scale operational turret-ship, and eventually one of each was authorized. Both sides to an extent got it wrong, for both specified a full sailing rig, even though steam technology was becoming more reliable by the year. But with the Captain Coles, compounded by the shipbuilders Laird's, got it much more wrong than Reed with the Monarch. The Captain had very low freeboard even as designed, and much lower when completed because of weight added during building; it was calculated that her stability vanished at an angle of heel of not much more than 40 degrees. Yet she was the darling of the Press, wholl1 Coles had assiduously wooed. On the first two or three occasions she went to sea she seemed to behave well enough, but she capsized in a Bay of Biscay gale on 6 September 1870.
The Monarch by contrast was stable and seaworthy, though she did not handle well under sail alone. Reed, her designer, never much liked the concept, and was much happier with his first 'mastless' turret-ship, the Devastation, which came into service only a short time after the Monarch in 1871. This vessel was the prototype of the Victorian battleship as the world came to know it: of low profile, broad-beamed, heavily armoured, its main guns in twin turrets forward and aft, with only a 'military mast' for flag signalling and no motive power other than steam.
In spite of the pattern that was then set, hull design proceeded by fits and starts for the next two decades, which have rightly been called the 'groping age' in warship design. Partly this was due to a belt-and-braces attitude in the users: they did not want to move to a navy reliant entirely on steam, a development which was considered too risky for them to contemplate. In consequence some battleships continued to appear during the 1870s with full sailing rigs which looked increasingly incongruous; at least one ship, Inflexible, the pride of the fleet, had instructions to ditch all masts and sails if she went into action. Turrets, too, were not regarded as the only sensible way of deploying big guns; the broadside battery was still favoured by many, and centre-battery ships were brought into service for several years after the appearance of the Devastation. The belt-and-braces approach was carried furthest in the Temeraire, a fully brig-rigged ship with centre-battery guns and two turrets. This ultimate hybrid came into service in 1877.
Things were no less tentatively managed on the Continent. The French built only eight battleships in the 1870s, less than half the number achieved by the British and of equally experimental design. The Russians were exceptionally enterprising, building some craft of extraordinary design culminating in the charmingly named 'popoffkas', almost completely round in plan. The Italians under their great designer Benedetto Brin produced some fast, powerful battleships that certainly influenced thinking worldwide, including Britain. Brin's attitude to armour was of particular interest: he favoured a central citadel with very little armour at either bow or stern, and this pattern was in essence adopted by the British chief designer Barnaby for some years around 1880 – much to the chagrin of Reed, who had retired but voiced dissent from the sidelines.
Much is made reference to the hazards caused by engine failure in multi-engined aircraft, and in particular to the high accident rates in B-26s, which were very difficult to save from a crash when an engine failed, but nevertheless later went on to become one of the safest bombers in which to serve a tour of duty.
The B-26 was given a mid-career redesign by the manufacturer, with increased wing span and a change in the angle of incidence of the wing, to improve its single-engined flying characteristics. A less-heralded change, but still an important one was from electrically-controlled propellers to hydraulically-controlled propellers. In his autobiography, Paul Tibbets (who piloted the "Enola Gay" B-29 on the Hiroshima mission) described a visit by Brig Gen Jimmy Doolittle to Tibbets' unit in North Africa, using a B-26 as a personal transport. He invited Tibbets to fly with him, and Tibbets mentioned the need to flip some battery switches inside the nosewheel well doors to the "on" position when entering the B-26 through the nosewheel well. He mentioned that it was common to forget to do this because the switches were so far from the pilots' seats, and control of the propellers would later become impossible because of draining of the batteries aboard the B-26 during taxi and takeoff. With an engine failure at that time, and no ability to change prop pitch, that would be one more factor contributing to accidents in the type. At the end of a flight, the same switches were to be switched "off" by the exiting crew. During Tibbets' flight with Doolittle, Doolittle feathered one engine and did loops forfun at low altitude in the B-26! Quite an aviator! Tibbets was caught on the ground in a town in North Africa during a Luftwaffe bombing raid, and had a near-brush with death, so he has some inkling of what a bombing raid is like on the ground.
I remember an interesting book by a former Luftwaffe test pilot, in which he described his assignment to fly a captured B-26 out of a farm field, so that it could be taken to a Luftwaffe test center and evaluated. The surface was soft, and he had the hairiest of possible takeoffs, but made it, and completed the flight. That B-26 had the electrically-controlled propellers and old-style wing.
As for the low loss rate, the B-26 was fast, and generally bombed from an altitude of about 6,000 feet. This was no accident: it was an early example of using Operations Research. Statistically, it had been found to be a safer altitude than other altitudes. It was too high for casual shooting by infantry weapons, but was below the normal altitude for heavy flak explosions. It would have been interesting to try other bomber types at that altitude, to see if their loss rate would have been improved. In the case of the 4-engined heavies, they were designed to achieve their range and bomb load performance at high altitudes, so trying them at 6,000 feet would have been ruled out.
The B-26 had no seats for the crewmembers in the nose: they knelt at their work. A South African pilot's memoir remarked that it was horribly cold inside, and the intercom system was very poor, garbling a lot of what was said by the crewmen among themselves.
SUMMARY: The Gatling gun was the first successful mechanical machine gun. First used in combat during the U.S. Civil War, it went on to see service throughout the world. Richard J. Gatling began work on his invention in 1861 but did not perfect it until 1864, when it was adopted by the U.S. Army. The British Army adopted a 10-barrel version in 1874 and the Royal Navy a .65-inch version in 1875. The major feature of the Gatling gun was the revolving barrel system that allowed each barrel to cool between shots. The Gatling was a very efficient mechanism and proved to be very reliable. In the 1890s, the inventor Gatling went so far as to mount an electric motor on one of his guns, achieving an almost unbelievable rate of fire of 3,000 rpm. Gatling's concept would be resurrected during the Cold War to provide the basis for the modern minigun.
The Gatling Gun
The most famous and successful of the mechanical machine guns was invented by Richard Jordan Gatling. Rather than practice medicine after completing medical school, Gatling spent his life inventing things, including a steam plow, a mechanical rice planter, and a hemp breaker. However, it was in the area of repeating arms that Gatling made his name. In 1861, taking advantage of the progress that had been made in machine tooling, he combined the best principles of the Ager and Ripley guns (although he denied that he had been influenced by either weapon), overcoming their more objectionable features. Because of his successful designs, Gatling has generally been credited with being the progenitor of the modern mechanical machine gun.
Gatling was fully aware of the problems with heat buildup from multiple explosions in a rapidly firing weapon. To overcome this, he designed the weapon with six barrels that would be fired in turn. This ensured that with a total potential fire rate of 600 rounds per minute, each barrel would only fire 100, allowing them to cool down.
The first Gatling gun, patented in November 1862, consisted of six barrels mounted around a central axis in a revolving frame with a hopper-shaped steel container similar to the Ager. The barrels were cranked by hand. The weapon used small steel cylinders that contained a percussion cap on the end, the bullet, and paper cartridges for the charge. It was loaded by placing the steel cylinders into the hopper above the gun, which fed the rounds into the breech by gravity. As the handle was turned, the six barrels and the breech mechanism revolve, each barrel having a bolt and a firing pin controlled by a shaped groove in the casing around the breech. As the breech revolved, the bolts were opened and closed and the firing pin released from the action of studs running in the groove. When any barrel was at the topmost point of revolution, the breech bolt was fully open and as it passed beneath the hopper a loaded cylinder was dropped into the feeder. As the barrel continued to revolve, the bolt was closed, leaving the firing pin cocked; as the barrel revolved to the bottommost point, the firing pin was released and the barrel fired. Further revolution caused the bolt to open and the empty case to be ejected, just in time for the barrel to reach the top again with the bolt open, ready to collect its next cartridge and casing.
Gatling made arrangements for six weapons to be manufactured for an official test by the Union Army. Unfortunately, the factory in which the guns were being made was destroyed by fire, and the guns and all his drawings were lost. The inventor was not deterred, however, and he was able to raise enough money to manufacture 12 new guns. This time he did away with the metal cylinders, using rim-fire cartridges instead. This made the newer weapon easier to load and more reliable. Gatling boasted that the gun could be fired at the rate of 200 shots per minute.
Despite Gatling’s claims, which were to be borne out by subsequent events, the Union Army failed to adopt the gun for two reasons. First, the army’s chief of ordnance, Colonel John W. Ripley (later brigadier general), strongly resisted any move away from standard- issue weapons. The other reason was suspicion that Gatling’s sympathies lay with the South. Although he had located his factory in Cincinnati, Ohio, Gatling had been born in North Carolina, which had joined the Confederacy. Therefore, to many among the Union leadership, his politics and sympathies were suspect. Gatling even appealed directly to President Lincoln, pointing out that his deadly invention was “providential, to be used as a means in crushing the rebellion.” Despite Gatling’s offer to help the North win the war, many in the Union high command felt there was something odd about a Southerner offering a new gun to the Union and thus refused to even consider Gatling’s invention. The only use of the Gatling gun during the Civil War occurred when General Benjamin F. Butler of Massachusetts personally purchased 12 guns for $1,000 each and later put them to good use against Confederate troops besieged at Petersburg, Virginia.
In 1864, Gatling completely redesigned the gun so that each barrel was formed with its own chamber, thus doing away with the separate cylinder and its attendant gas-leak problem. The gun now fed center-fire cartridges from a magazine on top. The cartridges were gradually fed into the chamber by cams as the barrels revolved, then fired at the bottom position, and were extracted and ejected during the upward movement. As the barrel reached the top it was empty and ready to take in the next round. The great advantage of this system was that it divided the mechanical work among six barrels so that all the machinery operated at a sensible speed. By this time, Gatling had refined the gun’s design considerably, increasing the rate of fire to 300 rounds per minute and improving reliability.
Gatling intensified efforts to sell the gun to the U.S. government. He published a publicity broadsheet in 1865 that informed the world that his gun bore “the same relationship to other firearms that McCormack’s Reaper does to the sickle, or the sewing machine to the common needle. It will no doubt be the means of producing a great revolution in the art of warfare from the fact that a few men can perform the work of a regiment.”7 At Gatling’s urging, the U.S. Army finally agreed later that year to conduct a test. Pleased with the results, the Army formally adopted the Gatling gun in 1866, ordering 50 of 1-inch caliber (with six barrels) and 50 of 0.50-inch caliber (with 10 barrels). Gatling entered a contract with Colt’s Patent Fire Arms Company of Hartford, Connecticut, to manufacture the guns for delivery in 1867. Gatling was so pleased with this arrangement that for as long as the U.S. government used the Gatling gun, it was manufactured by Colt.
Even though the U.S. Army had adopted the Gatling gun, there were two schools of thought among military men, both in the United States and elsewhere, about the best way to use it. One believed they should be used as artillery fire support; the other advocated its use for defending bridges and for street defense. Neither side recognized its true potential was as an infantry support weapon. This would be a recurring theme within the world’s armies regarding the Gatling gun and subsequent machine guns, as doctrine and tactics failed to keep pace with technological advances.
With the Civil War over and the arms embargo enacted during the war lifted, Gatling and the Colt’s Patent Fire Arms Company began marketing the weapon overseas, aggressively entering arms competitions throughout Europe. In each case, when a properly designed cartridge was used, the Gatling gun out-shot every competing design. In Great Britain, some military leaders had recommended the adoption of the machine gun, but cost considerations led Parliament to refuse to appropriate funding to develop such weapons. Nevertheless, the British Army tested Gatling’s weapon at Woolwich in 1870 in competition with the Montigny Mitrailleuse, a 12- pounder breechloader firing shrapnel, a 9-pounder muzzleloader firing shrapnel, six soldiers firing Martini-Henry rifles, and six soldiers firing Snider rifles. The Gatling fired 492 pounds of ammunition and obtained 2,803 hits on various targets; the Montigny 472 pounds for 708 hits; the 12-pounder 1,232 for 2,286 hits; and the 9-pounder 1,013 pounds for 2,207 hits. The British were impressed with the Gatling’s accuracy, its economy, and the fact that in timed fire it got off 1,925 rounds in 2.5 minutes. The test went so well that the British adopted the Gatling in caliber .42 for the Army and caliber .65 for the Royal Navy.
Great Britain became one of the first countries not only to recognize the utility of the Gatling gun but also to put it into action. After some initial difficulties with the new weapon during the Ashanti campaign of 1873 in the territory that is now Ghana, West Africa, the British Army wholeheartedly endorsed it. Events elsewhere in Africa contributed toward the acceptance of the Gatling gun. In South Africa on 22–23 January 1879, the British had suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Zulus under Cetshwayo at Isandlwana. In retribution for this defeat, a force of 4,000 infantrymen and 1,000 cavalry under the command of Lord Chelmsford set out to punish the Zulus. On July 4, the British, armed with two Gatling guns, engaged the Zulu warriors at Ulundi. The Gatlings wrought havoc among the Zulus, who had never gone up against such devastating fire. When the battle was over, more than 1,500 Zulus lay dead, most due to fire from the Gatlings. From then on the Gatling gun became a mainstay of British expeditionary forces in places like Egypt and the Sudan. Modern-day historian Robert L. O’Connell maintains that the Gatling and subsequently the Maxim machine gun were so popular with British colonial forces because “from an imperialist standpoint, the machine gun was nearly the perfect laborsaving device, enabling tiny forces of whites to mow down multitudes of brave but thoroughly outgunned native warriors.”
Over the next few years, most major armies in Europe, as well as those in Egypt, China, and much of South America, purchased Gatling’s weapon. The Russian government, preparing for war with Turkey, ordered 400 Gatlings. A Russian general was sent to the United States to oversee their manufacture and inspect the units before acceptance and shipping. With considerable cunning, he replaced the original Gatling nameplates with his own before the guns were shipped to Russia. Not surprisingly, some Russians claimed that Gatling had stolen important elements of the Gorloff model, which was called the Russian Mitrailleuse.
Despite Russian claims of originality, the Gatling was popular and saw use in many theaters. The inventor continued to work for 30 years on improvements and conducted many exhibitions throughout Europe and South America. Various models of varying calibers were introduced. By 1876, a five-barreled caliber .45 model was firing 700 rounds per minute and even up to 1,000 rounds in a short burst. By the mid-1880s, the armed forces of almost every nation in the world included Gatling guns among their inventories.
The Gatling was an effective design and remained in use until technology evolved such that a single barrel could be manufactured to withstand the heat and wear of multiple firings. After that advance, the Gatling disappeared. Before then, however, the Gatling saw long war service in countries, primarily as a instrument of colonialism, whereby small numbers of European soldiers could defeat large masses of native troops in Africa, Asia, and elsewhere.
Despite the increased firepower of the Gatling, it had some limitations technically and tactically. The multiple barrels prevented excess heat buildup, but they were also a liability due to their weight. The weapon was best used in defensive situations because it was too heavy and unwieldy to use on the attack. For that reason, Gatlings were usually relegated to the artillery to be used in batteries, rather than distributed to infantry and cavalry units. There were a few instances where this was not the case. The Americans first used the Gatling against a foreign enemy during the Spanish-American War in 1898. Under the leadership of Captain John H. “Gatling Gun” Parker, a Gatling unit was organized and employed against the Spaniards at Santiago, Cuba. Parker took it upon himself to push the guns, mounted on carriages, forward on the flanks of the attacking force, keeping up with the advancing infantry and effectively clearing a path for them. This was the first use of the machine gun for mobile fire support in offensive combat. Parker quickly became one of the pioneers in the development of a tactical doctrine built around the use of the machine gun in support of the infantry.
The Gatling gun and its inventor were way ahead of their times. It was the only weapon in history to progress from black powder to smokeless powder, from hand power to fully automatic, and eventually to an electric-drive system that allowed 3,000 rounds per minute. All this was accomplished without any change to its basic operating principle before being abandoned as obsolete in 1911. It was also a design that would have applications in the modern era.
There were improvements in artillery during the Napoleonic Period. Guns became more mobile and accurate, developments pioneered in Austria and Prussia, and introduced into the French service by de Gribeauval. Gribeauval artillery was provided with an elevating screw mechanism and calibrated tangent rear sights, considered the most significant improvements in the design of ordnance during the last two hundred years of the smoothbore era. While historians have made much of the supposed uniqueness of his range of field guns - 4-pounders (1.8 kg), 8-pounders (3.6 kg) and 12-pounders (5.4 kg) - Austrian, Prussian and English artillery was nearly as hard-hitting and mobile as the French, and was often utilized when captured.
In 1793 Gaspard Monge, the distinguished mathematician and scientist in charge of artillery procurement, estimated France was 6,000 pieces of artillery short. To speed up production Monge invented a simplified casting method, built furnaces in converted churches and trained additional workmen. Copper for the bronze barrels was obtained by requisitioning church bells and through tacit trade with the enemy: Production expanded during the Consulate and the Empire and seventeen new foundries turned out an astonishing quantity, yet supply never caught up with demand even though much captured materiel was pressed into service. Although the Austrian ordnance was slightly outmatched by their French equivalents in throw weight, Napoleon was well impressed and used it widely: At Wagram about one-third of his artillery was of Austrian origin, while light Prussian cannons were widely issued in Spain.
Gribeauval System Field Guns
Field guns included 4-, 8-, and 12-pounders, and Gribeauval at last incorporated new 6-inch howitzers into the French army as regulation field weapons. The 8-inch howitzer already in service since 1749 was also retained but was used on a more limited basis. The earliest Gribeauval field howitzer was heavily based on Prussian models that he had studied, but his later designs were so modified that they were virtually an entirely new type.
Gribeauval also redesigned his gun carriages so as to be more durable than the Austrian Lichtenstein models, to compensate for the combined rear and downward recoil—an improvement that both strengthened their construction and produced a lighter and shorter carriage than earlier models. Carriages were originally painted various shades of blue until after the Revolution, when their color was changed to green. Field carriages were also improved by the addition of black-painted iron reinforcing straps to stress points in the woodwork as well as the leading edges exposed to damage. A coffret—a removable ammunition chest located between the flasks—enhanced the ability of the crews to more quickly put their pieces in action during combat. To improve balance and enhance the stability of the guns while on extended marches, Gribeauval, borrowing from Lichtenstein’s 12-pounder carriage, added an extra pair of half-round trunnion cutouts toward the rear of the carriage. This feature, known as encastrement, did, however, require a rather laborious process involving levering and rolling with two handspikes to move the tube between the two positions. It was thus rarely if ever used in situations where combat was imminent.
Transportation was further improved with the introduction of a more efficient limber mounting a pole for the hitching of horses in side-by-side pairs. For transport, the reinforced hole in the transom at the end of the trail was passed over a pintle mounted over the limber’s axle and secured to make a four-wheeled cart. A four- horse team was required for the 4- and 8-pounders, and six horses for the 12-pounders. Gribeauval also introduced the caisson, essentially a large, four-wheeled ammunition chest with a rounded or peaked lid and a compartmentalized interior for various types of ammunition and equipment. The combination of the new limber and caisson enabled French field gunners to arrive on the field with their ammunition and thus go into action more rapidly than their opponents.
Gribeauval’s method of elevating his field guns’ tubes was also somewhat different from that of other European systems. Although employing a vertical elevating screw, as did most other contemporary systems, his screw did not come into direct contact with the barrel’s breech. It instead pushed against a wooden platform hinged to a transom beneath the barrel. Howitzers’ trunnions remained below the centerline, as they had in the Vallière System, but they too differed in their aiming mechanism. Although still retaining a quoin, it was adjusted mechanically for elevation by way of a horizontally mounted screw attached to the transom beneath the breech.
Performance: maximum speed, 1,460 miles per hour; ceiling, 75,460 feet; range, 746 miles
Armament: 2 × 30mm cannons; up to 8,818 pounds of bombs or rockets
Service dates: 1961–
The sleek Mirage III remains one of the classic fighter designs of all time and helped propel France to the forefront of military aviation. Through constant upgrades, many still fly in frontline service around the world.
In 1952 the Armee de l’Air sought an advanced lightweight interceptor to replace its aging Dassault Mysteres. The desired craft was intended to be built around two small turbojets and a small rocket booster. Dassault complied with a small delta design, the Mirage I, in 1953, but it was rejected as insufficiently powered. The firm then went on to develop the bigger Mirage III as a company project; it was powered by a single turbojet engine. In 1956 this craft became the first European warplane to exceed Mach 2, and the French military immediately expressed interest. The Mirage III was a conventional delta design, with a relatively small wing and a sharp, pointed profile. It was highly maneuverable and handled well, but like all delta designs it suffered from high landing speeds and a prolonged takeoff. Nonetheless, the first Mirage III entered service in 1961 and was followed by numerous multimission variants. It was also widely exported abroad, especially to Israel, which used them with decisive effect in the 1967 war. Most French machines have since been retired, but Mirage IIIs are continually upgraded and flown by several air forces, including Australia, Argentina, Brazil, and South Africa.
In 1967 Israel asked Dassault to design a cheaper ground-attack version, which subsequently emerged as the Mirage 5. This model lacked advanced radar systems in exchange for more fuel and greater payload. It too was an export success. The final development was the Mirage 50 of 1979, which utilizes the Mirage 5 airframe in concert with a more powerful engine and advanced avionics. It is currently utilized by more than 20 nations and will continue flying well into the twenty-first century. A total of 1,400 Mirages of all variants has been constructed.
