Dassault Mystère IV
The Mystère IV was France's first transonic fighter-bomber: a new design behind its resemblance to the Mystère II, with a thinner, more sharply swept wing, flown first on 28 September 1952. The United States funded 225 aircraft for the French Air Force, most production aircraft were bought under an offshore procurement contract, and 411 were built in all. Exported to Israel and India, it fought at Suez in 1956, in the Six-Day War of 1967 and in India's wars of 1965 and 1971, and it stayed in French service into the 1980s. Several examples survive in museums.
Why It Mattered
The Mystère IV was the French Air Force's first transonic aircraft, a clear step beyond the subsonic Mystère II from which it had been developed. Its production was underwritten by the United States, which ordered 225 aircraft through an economic development programme and gave them to the French Air Force. Exported to Israel and India, the type fought in the Suez Crisis of 1956, the Six-Day War of 1967 and the Indo-Pakistani wars of 1965 and 1971. Dassault built 411 Mystère IVs between 1953 and 1958, and the design laid the groundwork for the supersonic Super Mystère. It remained in French service into the 1980s, some three decades after its first flight.
Design Notes
Design work began in 1951, when Dassault set out to study transonic flight with a research aircraft based on the Mystère II. Although it resembled the earlier aircraft, the Mystère IV was a new design, its aerodynamics reworked for supersonic flight. The wing was swept at 38 degrees, against the Mystère II's 30, and made thinner in profile. The first 50 production aircraft used British Rolls-Royce Tay turbojets; the rest flew with the Hispano-Suiza Verdon 350, the French-built version of the same engine. The armament was a fighter-bomber's fit: two 30 mm DEFA cannon, up to 2,200 pounds of bombs and other ordnance, carried externally on four hardpoints, and a pack of 55 air-to-air rockets.
Operational History
The prototype, the MD.454, first flew at Melun-Villaroche on 28 September 1952, with Kostia Rozanoff at the controls. Production aircraft began entering French service in 1954, most of them purchased under a United States offshore procurement contract. France was the main operator, with six squadrons at the type's peak. Israel received 61 aircraft during 1956, and the Mystère became its first swept-wing fighter. When Israel attacked Egypt on 29 October 1956, in the opening move of the Suez Crisis, 101 Squadron put its Mystères over Sinai in both fighter and ground-attack roles. Israeli pilots were credited with one MiG-15 destroyed on 30 October, and the next day claimed four Egyptian Vampires and two more MiGs. Israeli Mystères flew 147 sorties during the short war and lost a single aircraft, brought down by ground fire on 2 November. French Mystères were also deployed in the Suez Crisis, alongside the Israeli aircraft. Eleven years later, in the Six-Day War of June 1967, two Israeli squadrons still flew the type in front-line service, making 610 ground-attack sorties. They claimed three Arab aircraft shot down in that war, for the loss of seven of their own. India, which had bought 110 aircraft in 1957, used its Mystères extensively as ground-attack aircraft in the 1965 war with Pakistan, and again in the war of 1971. Israel retired the Mystère on 18 March 1971 and India in 1974; France flew it into the 1980s.
Afterlife
Because most of the aircraft had been bought under the American offshore procurement contract, many French Mystères were returned to United States custody when France retired them. Several Mystère IVs survive today in museums, in France and abroad. Aircraft number 01 is preserved at the Musée de l'Air et de l'Espace. Another, serial 57, was delivered to the French Air Force in October 1955 and ended its travels at the Pima Air & Space Museum in Tucson in November 2011, where it remains on display, loaned by the National Museum of the United States Air Force.