Mirage iv video

[junglierating]

Well this popped up in my suggested....

all about the end of said aircraft with the french crabs (le crabe francais)...some excellent filmatography but unusually maintainers get a mention and lets face it if pilots were clever they too could fix aircraft ....but hey that's life 🤔😀

[noelh]

Beautiful Mirages over the beautiful French landscape. What's not to like? 

 

Agreed about the maintainers. My brother is an Aircraft Engineer. I'm a pilot. You can imagine the banter. 

 

I've often helped out Engineers though. I always get the dirty jobs, can't think why? 🤔

[junglierating]

2 hours ago, noelh said:

Beautiful Mirages over the beautiful French landscape. What's not to like? 

 

Agreed about the maintainers. My brother is an Aircraft Engineer. I'm a pilot. You can imagine the banter. 

 

I've often helped out Engineers though. I always get the dirty jobs, can't think why? 🤔

😁 I bet ...cab washes and cab wipes ....nice and safe 😀👍

[noelh]

47 minutes ago, junglierating said:

😁 I bet ...cab washes and cab wipes ....nice and safe 😀👍

Funny you should say that! Lying on my back scraping the congealed mixture of oil, exhaust and mud from the under the fuselage it did occur to me that my skills weren't being properly recognised. 😕

[NoSG0]

Could be worse.  Could be unplugging the pilot relief tube.

[JosephLalor]

Thanks for that.  Whenever I see an item about the Mirage IV, I'm always reminded about something I read long ago to the effect that their putative strike missions over the Soviet Union would likely have been one-way.

Edited November 29, 2020 by JosephLalor

[junglierating]

4 hours ago, JosephLalor said:

Thanks for that.  Whenever I see an item about the Mirage IV, I'm always reminded about something I read long ago to the effect that their putative strike missions over the Soviet Union would likely have been one-way.

I Like you're FEAF Spitfire 

[John B (Sc)]

21 hours ago, JosephLalor said:

Thanks for that.  Whenever I see an item about the Mirage IV, I'm always reminded about something I read long ago to the effect that their putative strike missions over the Soviet Union would likely have been one-way.

I think that would have been true for the RAF strike force too, although they planned for return. Perhaps the French were more pragmatic ! 

 

Thankfully no-one ever had to do it. 

[exdraken]

Great vid of such an elegant plane!

Thx!

[Doc72]

BTW: does anybody know why the upper side of the wing is painted uniformly green while the fuselage has the typical green-and-grey disruptive scheme (well invisible in the video at 21:08). This seems to be feature of all camouflaged Mirage IV unlike the single-engined Mirages.

[John B (Sc)]

2 hours ago, Doc72 said:

BTW: does anybody know why the upper side of the wing is painted uniformly green while the fuselage has the typical green-and-grey disruptive scheme (well invisible in the video at 21:08). This seems to be feature of all camouflaged Mirage IV unlike the single-engined Mirages.

 

I wondered if this might be associated with some late life wing investigation and repair work.  I think the Mirage IV  did have some 'mid life update' and check issues - which helps explain the Mirage IV tail the  senior folk walked past on their way to the crew rooms.

I have it in mid that early Mirage IV camouflage schemes were across the wings as well as fuselage - trouble is it is easy to see the side view, rarer to get a good look at the upper surfaces !  Have to loom out some old photographs to check. 

 

A beautiful aircraft. 

[Latinbear]

What a terrific video! Thanks very much for flagging this. Enjoyed every minute.

 

As someone who is neither a pilot or an engineer (and therefore has no axe to grind) the humorous comments in the posts above remind me of a quote in Robert Prest's " F4 Phantom, A Pilot's Story". He had just been posted to Wildenrath and in his room in the mess was a poster that read "The job of the air force is flying and fighting and the job of those who don't is to support those who do". 

 

I'll get me coat........!

[Des]

Fantastic video.

 

Regarding the upper wing colour , I recently bought two French Language books published by Zephyr who also get a credit in the video.     One is on the Mirage IV in general with an emphasis on the final years in the recce role and the other is more generally on the French Air Force Strategic mission , from what I can see in both of them it would appear that from when camouflaged started to be applied to the Mirage IV around 1975 and later carried on with the IVP the upper wing surfaces of the Mirage IV (or at least those that feature in the books) were always painted green overall.     

 

However it is noticeable in some images of late service aircraft that some of them give the appearance of having fairly large areas areas of two different greens on the upper wing each with slightly different sheens where one is far matter than the other.    It is not obvious in every image of every aircraft so  possibly just random  touching up with paint from a slightly different batch or areas that get more/less foot traffic from maintainers or maybe just a trick of the light.

[593jones]

On 11/29/2020 at 10:55 PM, John B (Sc) said:

I think that would have been true for the RAF strike force too, although they planned for return. Perhaps the French were more pragmatic ! 

 

Thankfully no-one ever had to do it. 

 

I remember reading somewhere (can't remember where) that RAF crews were told by a senior officer that on completion of their mission they should keep flying east and settle down with a fat Mongolian woman.  I wonder if any senior French air force officers offered similar advice?

[junglierating]

Regarding the upper wing colour ,I think I would be inclined to to paint a camo scheme like on its smaller brother...just out of artistic license....have to buy one first 🤔😁