Rocher, Alexis - Super Mirage 4000, the unfulfilled dream (digital edition)
Super Mirage 4000
The unfulfilled dream
The Super Mirage 4000 as told by its engineers and pilots
By Alexis Rocher
Launched on the personal initiative of Marcel Dassault, the Super Mirage 4000 is the last European combat aircraft to be financed by its manufacturer’s own funds. After summarizing several years of interviews with the main protagonists of the program, Alexis Rocher takes the reader to the heart of the technological arbitrations that presided over the design of the most powerful aircraft of its time.
Promoted in turn as a 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 some people. In France and elsewhere.
This is the first book ever published on this extraordinary aircraft, without which the Rafale would not be today’s world-renowned technological and commercial success.
The author takes us through the emotions of the first flight and the presentations at trade shows 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 enabled it to rest in good condition today at the Musée de l’Air at Le Bourget.
Richly illustrated with often previously unpublished photos, some from the personal collections of those involved in the program, this book provides a better understanding of the French aeronautical landscape in the 80s.
A historian, Alexis Rocher is editor-in-chief of the monthly Le Fana de l’Aviation and the quarterly Planète Aéro.
154 pages – in English – A5 – digital file to download
