Everything You Need To Know About Flying the Magnificent Mirage Fighter

Interview with Gonzalo O’Kelly, once one of the best fighter pilots in the Spanish Air Force

Now a crack aerobatic pilot, Gonzalo O’Kelly was once one of the best fighter pilots in the Spanish Air Force. During his time in the Ejército del Aire he flew the Mirage III, a formidable and beautiful French fighter.

“Let’s start with the big and comfortable Phantom F-4C. I did a lot of dissimilar training with them, usually two-on-two. It had a couple of characteristics in common with the Mirage III: if you meet one with an experienced pilot driving, it was a very hard adversary- and it needed a lot of finesse with the controls at low speed. They had to turn using their feet whenever their nose was very high! We preferred high altitude to have enough room to manoeuvre, while they always wanted to take us below 20,000 feet.

Their main advantage lies in the systems. The Phantom had a powerful radar, four eyes looking around, long-range missiles, two fantastic engines, but no guns, so they always tried not to get closer than 1.5 or 2 miles from us. We denied them that possibility because it is easier to close than to fly apart if you have an aircraft which accelerates like hell as soon as you put down your nose. Avoiding a Sidewinder is not so difficult if you are near the firing aircraft, and with speed to brake.

It was very easy to spot Phantoms from six or seven miles, because that huge black smoke trail that their engines left behind (except in afterburner) and because it was a big bird. We always had a lot of fun in dissimilars with the Spanish Phantoms,  the post briefings were real hard battles, and everyone learned a lot about dogfighting, mutual support and extracting the best from our Mirages.

Scissoring with a Phantom was something you remember forever. Only two crosses were allowed.. but what exciting crosses! Sometimes, the first engagement ended before beginning — if both pairs crossed, we pulled hard up, and they dived down, so both lost visual contact with each other.

It was so much fun with the USAF Phantoms. The last mission I flew before leaving the 11th Wing was a week-long detachment in Torrejón AB to train our American fellows in tactics against the Mirage III.

They flew the F-4D, a bit better than C, but still no guns. To begin with, their briefings were 2 hours long! Rules of Engagement took 45 minutes.

I remember after finishing the first one, the Major leading the flight asked me, “How long before you need to start the engines?” I said five minutes. His eyebrows shot-up, “Five minutes? We need 30 minutes at least”. My God! 

As we were there to do what they needed from us, we flew as required two manoeuvres and then knocked it off, and repeat and repeat. After two days, we had some fun, and they got a couple of surprises, and hopefully some lessons.” 

What were your first impressions of the Mirage III? 

“I was a young lieutenant, 24 years old, fresh from the Spanish Air Force Fighter School, and with about 450 flight hours in my log when I first encountered a Mirage. It was an impressive and beautiful aircraft, and the 11th Wing (based in Manises Air Base, near Valencia) was an elite unit, heir to the Garcia Morato’s (40 victories ace) standard and badge. I was assigned to the 111th Squadron (triple one, the best one), and so began the four best years of my life (nowadays, the 11th Wing is based in Morón Air Base flying Typhoons).

The Mirage III entered the Spanish Air Force inventory in 1970, surrounded by a great aura won in the brutal skies of the Six Days War by Israel. By the time I arrived, its performance in the Yom Kippur War further cemented this formidable reputation.

Ours was the Mirage IIIE version, which had a better radar than the C one, a Doppler navigation system, and a different vertical stabilizer.

What was the cockpit like? 

It was narrow, as was usual in French aircraft of its time (the F1 cockpit was the same). I was always very surprised when I saw those Phantom pilots walking towards their aircraft with a big bag; there was not enough room for a sandwich bag in the Mirage III cockpit.

It’s almost as if ergonomics was invented after the Mirage III cockpit layout was designed. We had to push or pull at least two or three switches placed in different control panels to arm the weapons. Being good at twisting your torso was compulsory. I especially remember the starting button, which was placed well behind the thrust lever, and you had to push it by putting your left hand about 20 cm behind your back. The radar screen had insufficient brightness, so they placed a plastic cowl about 30 cm long, protruding towards your face (the display was in the centre of the frontal panel). As a result, ‘the ball’ (the attitude indicator) was displaced to the left. It was the first and only time I’d flown an aircraft without the ball directly in front of my eyes. Added to this is the peculiarly French custom of having the ball’s vertical reference at the bottom. Anyway, after a dozen or so flights, you were happy with the complicated dance your fingers had to perform around the cockpit. Instead of HOTAS we had ‘HATC’, (Hands Around The Cockpit)!”

What were the best things about the Mirage III?

“First, it was beautiful, complying with the first Law of Aerodynamics: ‘beautiful aircraft fly well’ (the opposite is also true, ‘ugly aircraft fly badly’). The Snecma Atar 9C was a very reliable engine, resistant to compressor stalls and almost immune to flame-out in flight. It was very easy to fly if you had enough speed, and stable around its envelope. We always flew with two supersonic fuel tanks, but the aircraft's behaviour was very docile. It was also very strong. It had a landing gear that would have been strong enough for carrier landings, and it wasn’t unusual to see 30 people over the wings and fuselage posing for a photo. We didn’t need any ground support to start the engine, which was very good for detachments. It was very good at accelerating in a dive, no aircraft of that time could follow us. The aerodynamics were excellent but designed for high speed.

It had double-speed brakes coming up and down the wings, which added stability if you had to deploy them, and, of course, a Stability Augmentation System for pitch and yaw (or, in French, ‘language’ and ‘last’).

What were the worst things about the Mirage III?

“It was very underpowered, so no close or turning dogfight was possible. Common word at the time said that the Snecma Atar was a development of BMW engines of Me 262, and sometimes it appeared that this was true! Power supplied was 6700 kgs with afterburner, while normal take-off weight was around 11000 kgs. There were no flaps or slats which would have aided its dogfight performance. There was also nothing to compensate for the huge induced drag caused by the big delta wing and the very long take-off and landing runs. The approach speed was 185 knots (which would need to be adjusted to accommodate any extra weight). We always used the brake chute on landings. The engine was a plain turbojet and was as thirsty as hell with or without afterburner. The fuel-burning rate jumped to infinity when we pushed it into the afterburner, as we would for a whole dogfight. To worsen this problem, the internal fuel tanks had a capacity of only 2980 litres, enough for two dogfights near the airfield and 45 flight minutes. That’s why we always had those two external tanks, 500 litres each.”

What was the role of your squadron? 

“In my time, it was 80% air defence and 20% ground attack, which was changed to 60/40 a few years later.”

Was the Mirage effective at this role? 

“First, we have to understand that the Mirage III was designed in the late fifties — and as a fighter-interceptor, which meant climbing and flying as fast as possible towards the target to intercept it as far as possible from home. It was similar to the F-104: no multipurpose intentions, no manoeuvring dogfight expected..

After the late fifties designers stopped creating fighters optimised for Mach 2, as it’s not very useful.

But the Mirage III was good in a dogfight in the hands of an experienced pilot. But no mercy for rookies. By the end of its life, we were pretty proud of what it achieved in dogfights against far more modern aircraft. In war, the Mirage proved to be highly effective in air-to-air fighting, as demonstrated by the Israeli Air Force.

While it wasn’t supposed to be its business, the Mirage III behaved quite well in the ground attack role, but again, good training was essential.

We had no frills to aid our aiming, just a fixed pepper, which had to be calibrated by the pilot according to the weapon type. We had no guided bombs, just 2.75 rockets or the two 30-mm guns. We had a firing range 20 minutes flight time from the base, which was built to train our Wing but was also frequented by other squadrons, and we flew a lot of missions out there. The Mirage III’s horizontal stability was a boon in the ground attack role, making it quite easy to put the pipper on target and keep it there — but you had to fly at the right speed and with the correct diving angle, or your bomb could fly out of the range. It was easier with the rockets of course, but 100 feet short or beyond the target was still a normal score for unexperienced pilots.

With the guns (or cannons as we called them), coming very close to the target made it easy to hit it, and the bullets dispersion was straight enough to make really big holes, one 30-mm bullet, one foot long, was something. The problem was we only had 230 bullets and a firing rate of 1,300 bullets per minute. The Mirage III payload was small, and we always needed external tanks for ground attack, so we never had more than three hard points available. In the inner wings hard points, we could take two special fuel/bomb carrier tanks with four 250 kg bombs attached and with a capacity of 500 litres. It was called the RPK-10. Our Phantom colleagues made a lot of jokes about the fact they could carry more rockets than bullets…and it was true! We answered by saying that we flew fighters, not bombers.”

Were the weapon systems effective? 

“Well, in those years nobody had weapon systems, maybe the Phantom was the exception. We had weapons and ways of using them. Our only ‘modern’ weapon was the radar-guided missile Matra 530. We could carry just one in the aircraft belly hard point. It was big and heavy, and we didn’t like to fly with its added drag.

But the Cyrano II radar's average effective range of detection was no more than 15 nautical miles, and if flying below 10,000 ft, the ground clutter made it almost impossible to see any radar returns – so it was not a really effective weapon. We trusted our eyes much more than the old Cyrano II; we had two Sidewinders AIM-9B, two powerful cannons and mastered their use.”

What was the most frightening mission you flew? 

“I had a very frightening mission — but was it my fault. The Mirage III was a noble steed, though you had to be careful when flying at the envelope limit. It was a one-on-one dogfight training flight in my Initial Training Course. I had about 25 flying hours on the type. Remember what I said before? The Mirage offered really no mercy to rookies.

I was flying on a two-seater Mirage IIID, with my instructor in the back and my sparring partner was our Squadron Chief, Lieutenant Colonel Quintana who sadly passed away a couple of years ago. I, of course, wanted show to off my flying skills, but my aircraft had other ideas.

The first engagement began with me 2,000 ft higher and on his 5 o’clock. Both of us were at about 450 kts. I called “engaged”, and he broke hard towards me. I had the advantage in speed and altitude so I let him pass left to right in front of me, and pulled up to exchange speed for altitude while turning right towards him. I still had a good position – and the advantage, so next, our cross was almost equal, with both trajectories crossing with an angle of around 60 degrees. In this cross he already had his nose down.

I was still turning hard right with little energy, but when he passed again in front of me, I decided to change my turn to the left to get behind him. It was a good manoeuvre with enough energy to soften the turn, but that young lieutenant maintained the G’s. It looked like my aircraft agreed with me for a couple of seconds, and then suddenly changed its mind and gave me the most vicious self righting turn while stalling, and then going into a steep spin.

I controlled the spin while the instructor yelled at me in the interphone, and recovered after two rounds in which I lost 14,000 feet of altitude! The aircraft wanted to give me final lesson for the day, and promptly gave me a compressor stall to fight after the spin recovery. This at least, was easy: throttle back to idle and very gently, again forward. To understand how fast you could lose altitude in the Mirage III, we began at 35 angels (35,000ft), and recovered the compressor stall at 8,000 feet.

Then back to the base to report the compressor stall to maintenance and enjoy a particularly ‘nice’ post briefing.”

Which aircraft did you fly against in dissimilar type combat training? 

As Spain was not yet in NATO, we were limited to dissimilar with Phantoms from the 12th Wing, based in Torrejón Air Base, and Mirage F1 from the 14th Wing in Albacete Air Base. Once a year, we took part in exercises with the US Navy 6th Fleet. This allowed us to have some very boring dogfights with the Tomcats.”

Mirage versus F-14 Tomcat

“Regarding our exercises with the US Navy’s 6th Fleet, we always played the bad guys trying to attack and sink the carrier, but it was almost impossible. Think of 20 destroyers and cruisers around, all of them full of long and short-range guided missiles -and leaving no hole to go through. So at the end of our attacking run, we used to meet a couple of Tomcats, but maybe they knew we had been killed three or four times before arriving there, so they didn’t seem eager for a bit of rock ’n’ roll. A couple of turns with their wings fully extended, and that’s all folks. Anyway, we were at low altitude.I don’t know why they never planned for real dissimilar dogfights with us as part of the exercises. They were not interested. Pity. You know what navies are like though…” 

Mirage III versus Mirage F1

“The Mirage F1 was a completely different thing. They had a lot of advantages over the Mirage III: Better engine, 7200 kgs against our 6700; the aircraft was a ton lighter; it did not need external tanks, so it always flew in a full clean configuration; automatic slats and flaps; and better radar and a HUD. Only the weapons were equal: Sidewinders and guns. To dogfight them was real hard work for us. We had to emphasise mutual support to stop them from entering firing range. If we reached an advantageous position on one of them, they only had to zoom up and comfortably wait up there for us to nose down and generate sufficient speed to follow. Our only resource was the diving acceleration, so the usual tactic was fly towards them at full throttle, kill the speed to get a position to fire the Sidewinder and escape diving like hell. I remember the F1 pilots complaining because we always tried to avoid close dogfights. Our answer always was: give us your engine and automatic slats/flaps and we’ll stay for close dogfight.” 

Mirage III versus B-52

“In four years and more than 800 flight hours, there were a lot of notable flights, but the one coming to mind was, perhaps, a very demanding sortie that I flew in a huge air defence exercise that included USAF. Two Mirages, with my friend Lieutenant Maestre and myself, were scrambled to intercept two enemy aircraft flying high with a northeast track south of Madrid. Manises AB is located east of Spain, so they were flying approximately towards us.

In our first communication with our interception controller, he told us two traces were flying at 45 angels! (45,000 feet, so they were not hiding at all), and flying extremely slowly at about 200 kts IAS. 

We were surprised because we had never engaged such a conspicuous target, and never one so high and slow, but up we went, climbing in afterburner, and reached 45 angels in about 10 minutes.

The second surprise (a nasty one) was that we had to maintain military power to stay at that altitude and speed (250 kts IAS). Flight controls and throttle had to be handled very carefully, or we could lose altitude or speed or both…and any sudden movement of throttles could lead to a compressor stall.

The third surprise was that we had radar contact with the targets when they were 25 miles away, which was very unusual for the old Cyrano II.

But the biggest surprise was having a tally-ho with two ponderous big B-52Es, (with radar-guided twin 20-mm cannon in the back), flying wide abreast. They were about 10 miles leaving a trail of black smoke behind them.

We had them in our 1 o’clock, so I decided to get closer and turn right towards their 6. When I was about 1 mile, the closest B-52 made a high bank turn towards me — which I could not follow because of my slow speed so I had to go down and accelerate again. My wingman did the same while approaching the second B-52.

It was easy for them to turn like that at such an altitude, with those tremendous wings, but not for us.

So down we went, accelerated and set afterburner to climb again. This time, we approached from behind them, but then our radar warning lit up, showing their rear cannons had locked on us. So we immediately broke, and headed down again. More afterburner, another climbing and this time we closed on them from their 3 o’clock. Of course, they made their defensive 60º bank turns towards us, but this time we made some nice gun camera snapshots with the pipper right between their wings.

After flying over them, we joined in close formation with their leader and flew with them for a short while to pay them our respects (a very short time because we were a bit beyond our Bingo fuel). I’ll never forget that enormous aircraft turning hard towards me, it was terrific.”

Which three words describe the Mirage? 

“Reliable, stable and difficult to master.”

Which equipment did pilots want on added to the Mirage III? 

“Every Mirage III pilot agrees on what we needed to improve our aircraft:

• A more powerful engine was first

• Flaps and slats to shorten take-off and landings and allow for turning dogfighting.

– Better radar and systems.

– Reduce weight.

In summary, we wanted a Mirage 2000.”

How well-trained and equipped was the Spanish Mirage force? 

“Very well. Between 1970 and 1975, every pilot asking to be assigned to 11th Wing needed 1,500 jet flying hours to be accepted. The experience level was high.

When they began to assign fresh lieutenants, and mine was the second group, we had to go through an Initial Training Course comprising about 100 flight hours — on every type of mission with special attention to air combat.

We used to log many hours in those years, never less than 200 hours per year, with many months 35 hours or more. I flew two missions per day many times.

Every pilot took two weeks of simulator practice per year. We went to France in six pilot groups, each with six simulator hours.

So the training was superb, though we could have done more training with dissimilar types and attended more exercises. The only squadron exchanges were with French units, flying the Mirage III or F-1, so nothing new.”

“Another sortie I love to remember was no doubt, a non-accounted world record. It was May 1980. An Armed Forces Week was to be celebrated in Valencia, ending with a big military parade with an air force flypast. The 11th Wing would be hosting, so we should display the most dramatically. A diamond nine was planned, and as usual, a training flight would be flown to check ground references and have some fun.

The leader of the training flight was my Squadron Chief, Mayor Carretero, one of the greatest pilots I’ve ever met and a member of a Spanish Aerobatic Team for many years, and still flying.

I was placed in the centre of the diamond, behind the leader. We took off in threes, joined up and climbed to 20,000 feet over the sea, southeast of the Base, flying parallel to the shoreline.

Some sweet turns and manoeuvres were made to make everyone feel comfortable, and then we heard the leader on the tactical frequency, “Let’s make a loop”. At once every aircraft around me flickered up and down as if they, not their pilots of course, were suddenly nervous. Well, I must say I was quite nervous. And then, confirmation, “We’ll fly a loop, I’ll dive to get 550 kts with such power, and flying as gently as possible”.

Imagine a diamond nine as the Red Arrows do, but with Mirages Is! And down we went, speeding 550 kts, and gently the noses went up, more and more, and then we faced down again as if it was business as usual. Mayor Carretero asked by the radio how it was received, and there was enthusiastic requests asking for more from all the pilots.

And we did more, performing two more loops. Nobody saw us, and not even one picture was taken, but we still did it. The glory of flying at its best.”

What should I have asked you? 

“I think your questions were very good and covered everything people would like to know about the Mirage III. After four years of flying a glamorous legend, I could only add how I felt, an aircraft placed in a concise list of flying wonders every aviation fan knows. It was a real honour; the F1 was better, but the Mirage III was as historically significant as the 11th Wing itself. From Fiat CR-32s, Messerschmitts, Sabres on to the Mirage III, and today, Typhoons.

I was also lucky enough to master such a difficult warhorse, and I’m proud of being a small part of 11th Wing’s long history.”

What do you think of the appearance of the Mirage III

“ It was a beautiful aircraft and as highly photogenic as any other delta-winged plane. It also had a nice camouflage paint scheme, which I miss. Unlike the universal light grey every air force uses today, which is utterly boring.

What was the Mirage like in the following ways:

A. Instantaneous and sustained turn rates

“Well, not very good at instantaneous- but better in sustained turns as with everything else, with the nose down.”

B. Agility

“Hmmmm, next question please.”

C. Climb rate

“Good enough in those years.”

D. Landing and taking-off 

“The take-off run was quite long in clean configuration and scary at or near maximum weight. Every Mirage III pilot remembers those 185 kts of approach speed.”

E. Reliability

“Very good. I’ve already talked about the engine. I have never heard of a flame-out; there were only some compressor stalls, and all of them were pilot error-induced. We in the 11th Wing, enjoyed highly experienced mechanics and engineers, and their work was outstanding. It was very common to have 80% of the fleet operative, and it was never below 50%.”

Tell me something I don’t know about the Mirage III

“The Mirage III operations manual stated that the ceiling was an astonishing 70,000 feet, but the only way of reaching that altitude was with a rocket engine installed below the engine nozzle. Of course, the pilot had to wear a pressurised flying suit to climb to an altitude where you can see practical demonstration of Copernicus’ theories: the Earth is round! This rocket was called the SEPR 84, and burnt a mixture of normal Jet A1 and nitric acid.

While the contract for buying the Mirages was negotiated, our air force was interested in adding the rockets. A special hangar was built at the base to handle the rockets and their hazardous fuel. Pressurised flying suits were acquired together with their refrigeration cases (very similar to the ones used by astronauts). In the end they served to ‘welcome’ new lieutenants, who were ordered to try the suit (without the comfort of the refrigeration case).

In the end, and happily for the pilots, they decided not to buy them. If you’ve seen The Right Stuff, you’ll understand why by remembering the scene in which Yeager is flying an F-104 rocket assisted, and suddenly and a very high altitude, the rocket flames out.

Another feature of the Mirage III was its Mach 2 capacity, a common capability from the 1960s onwards, but absolutely useless. In the Initial Training Course, they gave us one sortie dedicated to reaching Mach 2.

The procedure was to climb to the troposphere in a southeast track from the base, over the Mediterranean, and fly away 250 NM. Then you inverted the heading towards home, set maximum afterburner and began acceleration in level flight until you reached Mach 1.4. Then you climbed, maintaining 1.4 until reaching 40.000 feet, level again to accelerate to Mach 1,8, and again maintaining this Mach climb to 50,000 to level and accelerate to Mach 2, which didn’t always happen. After reaching Mach 2 you made a pure ballistic trajectory climbing until you had to lower the nose to maintain speed. And then the deceleration. Afterburner OFF and descending. It was forbidden to throttle back above Mach 1,4, so speed brakes and Gs were mandatory once back in the atmosphere.

We finished about 40 or 50 miles from base and with just enough fuel for transit and landing. As the movie demonstrated, controls had to be handled with extreme finesse during acceleration and even more during deceleration.

In my Mach 2 sortie, I got it and reached 65,000 feet.”