Super Mirage 4000
The unfulfilled dream
The Super Mirage 4000 as told by its engineers and pilots
Designed as superior
to the Mirage IV
Launched at the personal initiative of Marcel Dassault, the Super Mirage 4000 is the last European fighter aircraft to be financed from its manufacturer's own funds. After summarising several years of interviews with the main protagonists of the programme, Alexis Rocher takes the reader to the heart of the technological choices that went into the design of the most powerful aircraft of its time.
Developed for export
Promoted in turn as a possible successor to the Mirage IV nuclear bomber, then offered for export as a very high-performance fighter-bomber, the Super Mirage 4000 was likely to alter the geostrategic balance in the Middle East. In this respect, it probably frightened people. In France and elsewhere.
Each stage described by its players
The author takes us through the emotions of the first flight and the presentations at trade fairs and to foreign delegations, the differences of opinion at the highest levels of industry and politics, the dashed hopes of export success, and finally the discreet efforts of those who have enabled it to rest in good condition today at the Musée de l'Air at Le Bourget.
A wealth of iconography
This is the first book ever published on this extraordinary aircraft, without which the Rafale would not be today a technological and commercial success recognised the world over.
Heavily illustrated with often previously unpublished photos, some from the personal collections of those involved in the programme, this book provides a better understanding of the French aeronautical landscape in the 1980s.
152 pages - A5 - hard cover - 29 € (plus shipping)