Salvador Mafe Huertas

A review of the type history of the French Mirage series of delta-wing fighters. Widely (and often controversially) exported, the Mirage was one of the most widely-used military aircraft in the West up until the F-16. The controversy comes from the exports to Israel and South Africa in the apartheid era, and the type's use by Chile in the period of the Pinochet regime. There is also controversy over the accusation that the French had to put up with an aircraft of a lesser specification so as to keep the price down for export, though this issue is not covered in this book. It does address the matter of technology transfer from Britain, as the Mirage closely resembles the Fairey Delta record-breaking aircraft that were used extensively in the research that led to the development of Concorde, but which the British government of the day abandoned development into an effective military production aircraft because of the infamous 1957 White Paper by the Tory defence minister Duncan Sandys, which halted so much aircraft development in the belief that manned aircraft were about to be rendered obsolete by missiles.

The book also concentrates on Argentinian experience of using the Mirage in action in the Falklands War. Three chapters and the introduction are devoted to this, which may irritate those with an excess of patriotism.… (mehr)