Somewhere in an alternate universe, in 1959 SNECMA picked RR RB.142 Medway for the Mirage IVB (in place of selling their soul to P&W to get J75s) and even if this one was later canned, RR and SNECMA stayed in touch.
Concorde's Olympus in 1962 happened as per OTL.
In 1963 SNECMA OTL TF-306 program was replaced by the RB.168 Spey. This included british two-seat Crusaders for the French Navy, far more capable than OTL "Crouzes".
All the experience gathered on the Spey-Crusader then poured into the Mirage III-T, F2, F3, Mirage G.
In passing, the Spey-Crusader cooperative program destroyed both Jaguar and AFVG as "the cooperative Anglo-French combat aircraft program."
With the Spey proving extremely satisfactory, SNECMA interest and project of smaller turbofans (M45 and Adour) were strangled in infancy. But the Spey proved too big for any twin-jet fighter or light bomber.
France and Great Britain, later joined by Germany, managed to build a modest subsonic trainer, the AlphaHawk (a truly ackward name, really). Per lack of Adour in Jaguar and Hawk, it was Turbomeca that took the helm with their Larzac, two of them powering the AlphaHawk.
After TSR-2 death the Spey Mirage IV* become a go. This sunk the F-111K and Tornado, but also Dassault G, G4 and G8 - no need for VG naval fighters or bombers with the Twosader and Spey Mirage IV doing a fine job. The lone Mirage G prototype proved outstanding but went nowhere.
So the Mirage IV production, which seemed to be stopped at 62 machines in 1968, actually continued into the 70's. The reason was simple: the Mirage IV was, quite simply, the only twin-jet airframe France and Great Britain could afford.
Anything else - a never ending list including the Phantom, AFVG, Tornado, TSR-2, F-111, G4, G8, G8A - were just insanely expensive. When this become painfully obvious in 1968, Great Britain went for a Spey-Mirage but De Gaulle prefered an M53 bird, less expensive, with french engines that were true heirs of the Atar, size of the engine bays included. Fact is that the Spey was hard to shoehorn into the old Mirage airframe, being 30 cm wider than the M53. Yet the two aircraft were evenly matched in performances: the Spey Mirage IV ruled at low level, when the M53 gave the French bird better performance at altitude. Both were fortunate: the British had no stand off cruise missile past the Blue Steel, so low-level speed was key for survival. By contrast the French could afford medium or high height dashes... because they fired ASMPs.
By 1968 the AdA decided to procure a handful of uprated Mirage IVs with the coming M53 rather than the Spey. In turn, this and the massive F3 procurement program sunk any false hope of a heavy twin-jet fighter - the G4 and G8 and a fixed wing G8A never got out of the drawing board. Neither did a revamped Mirage III with FBW. Instead analog and later digital FBW were flown on F3 demonstrators.
Meanwhile as per OTL the Mirage F2 was dumped as unnecessary, too, while the OTL F1 and F3 blended into a one and only multirole fighter, first powered by a Spey and later to be upgraded with the M53.
There were many variants of the F3 - single and two seater, land and carrier based, Spey and M53, interceptor and ground pounders. Production lasted well into the 90's and broke the old Mirage III record of 1400 aircraft, reaching as far as 2000.
Without the "Jaguar heavy financial burden" of the late 60's the AdA could procure a boatload of them, soon joined by the RAF (Lightning replacement, no Phantoms) and also the RN.
Indeed the hopeless CVA-01 was canned as per OTL, then the cranky Ark Royal was scrapped. In their place would be an uprated Eagle, plus a bunch of Centaurs.
They would remain the mainstay of the RN carrier fleet until the end of Cold War.
While Thatcher decided to retire the Eagle in 1980, (a decision that triggered the Falkland ATL war , of course ! ) luckily enough for the RN the smaller and cheaper Centaur (three of them) proved surprisingly sturdy, and durable.
They thoroughly kicked the ass of Galtieri Argentina, sinking General Belgrano and 25 de Mayo in a hail of Exocet missiles.
The last two Centaurs (the third was retired at the end of Cold War) lasted into the early 2000's (!), long enough for the Anglo-French carriers to replace them.
This program started in 1972 as a "joint helicopter carrier" blending the now unuseful "Through Deck Cruiser" with "PH75". Exploratory talks with the Spanish and Italian navies unfortunately led nowhere. Which was not a bad thing after all when, in the 80's as both Clemenceaus and Centaurs urgently needed replacement. After the Falklands the join Helicopter Carrier morphed into a 50 000 tons CATOBAR ship that barely managed to survive the end of Cold War and entered service by 2001.
The French Navy stuck with the spey Twosader but conceded the F3 could be interesting later on. They did the swap in the early 80's.
The Spey F3 was pitched to Belgium in 1973 and they bought it, making the later Deal of the Century a three way affair between Denmark, Norway and The Netherlands. Most of OTL air forces that bought F1s bought F3 and found the more powerfuls Speys and M53s quite useful (hint: Iraq against the Iranians).
Germany per lack of a Tornado bought a mix of Phantoms and F-111s. Italy, Spain, Great Britain, and the United States got a join agreement to build uprated Harriers (think AV-8B and Sea Harrier having a one night stand) for the RAF (not the RN of course) USMC, Spanish and Italian navies. Great Britain barely managed to stay in control of the Harrier against assault of MDD. By the 80's Great Britain took leadership of the P.1216, the Harrier successor (Typhoon and F-35 blend together, somewhat).
During the 70's the AdA exploited the full potential of the F3 (450+ were procured) and upgraded it with the M53; by the early 80's the bulk of the French combat fleet was F3s plus upgraded Mirage IVs with either Spey or M53.
The Aéronavale finally bowed to the pressure, replacing its Twosaders with Mirage F3 in the late 70's. By this point the Crusader / Etendard IV split was long gone. Inspired by the USN Crusaders used in the fighter bomber role over Vietnam, in the early 70's the Aéronavale ditched its Etendard IV in favor of giving the Twosader a similar role, greatly helped by the raw power of the Spey at low level and also the two-men crew.
This was only a transitional solution: the Aéronavale turned its Twosader into ground pounders only to "prove" a naval Mirage F3 would assume both roles - interceptor and fighter bomber. The job done, the Aéronavale acepted a multirole, naval F3 - at discount prize from Dassault, since that aircraft was near the end of a massive production run. 42 Crusader and 71 Etendard IV had been procured, and the number of F3M was rounded to 100.
With the P.1216 on one side, and the F3 on the other, sucking all the money; and without the Tornado experience, any hopes for an European combat aircraft (Rafale vs Typhoon OTL sterile knife fight) was DoA.
Europe however had the P.1216 joint program that on the U.S side soon extended to a F-22 low-end companion - a F-16 / F-18 possible successor.
Dassault successive failures pitching the AdA twin-M53 F3 successors (G4, G8, G8A..) make them understood that something was wrong with the concept of a french heavy fighter. The example of SAAB Grippen pushed them in a similar direction, with a much uprated, single M53 delta-canard combat aircraft including digital FBW. That modern-day Mirage III sold like hot cakes, achieving a difficult objective -replacing the F3. It completed the P1216 pretty well.
Concorde's Olympus in 1962 happened as per OTL.
In 1963 SNECMA OTL TF-306 program was replaced by the RB.168 Spey. This included british two-seat Crusaders for the French Navy, far more capable than OTL "Crouzes".
All the experience gathered on the Spey-Crusader then poured into the Mirage III-T, F2, F3, Mirage G.
In passing, the Spey-Crusader cooperative program destroyed both Jaguar and AFVG as "the cooperative Anglo-French combat aircraft program."
With the Spey proving extremely satisfactory, SNECMA interest and project of smaller turbofans (M45 and Adour) were strangled in infancy. But the Spey proved too big for any twin-jet fighter or light bomber.
France and Great Britain, later joined by Germany, managed to build a modest subsonic trainer, the AlphaHawk (a truly ackward name, really). Per lack of Adour in Jaguar and Hawk, it was Turbomeca that took the helm with their Larzac, two of them powering the AlphaHawk.
After TSR-2 death the Spey Mirage IV* become a go. This sunk the F-111K and Tornado, but also Dassault G, G4 and G8 - no need for VG naval fighters or bombers with the Twosader and Spey Mirage IV doing a fine job. The lone Mirage G prototype proved outstanding but went nowhere.
So the Mirage IV production, which seemed to be stopped at 62 machines in 1968, actually continued into the 70's. The reason was simple: the Mirage IV was, quite simply, the only twin-jet airframe France and Great Britain could afford.
Anything else - a never ending list including the Phantom, AFVG, Tornado, TSR-2, F-111, G4, G8, G8A - were just insanely expensive. When this become painfully obvious in 1968, Great Britain went for a Spey-Mirage but De Gaulle prefered an M53 bird, less expensive, with french engines that were true heirs of the Atar, size of the engine bays included. Fact is that the Spey was hard to shoehorn into the old Mirage airframe, being 30 cm wider than the M53. Yet the two aircraft were evenly matched in performances: the Spey Mirage IV ruled at low level, when the M53 gave the French bird better performance at altitude. Both were fortunate: the British had no stand off cruise missile past the Blue Steel, so low-level speed was key for survival. By contrast the French could afford medium or high height dashes... because they fired ASMPs.
By 1968 the AdA decided to procure a handful of uprated Mirage IVs with the coming M53 rather than the Spey. In turn, this and the massive F3 procurement program sunk any false hope of a heavy twin-jet fighter - the G4 and G8 and a fixed wing G8A never got out of the drawing board. Neither did a revamped Mirage III with FBW. Instead analog and later digital FBW were flown on F3 demonstrators.
Meanwhile as per OTL the Mirage F2 was dumped as unnecessary, too, while the OTL F1 and F3 blended into a one and only multirole fighter, first powered by a Spey and later to be upgraded with the M53.
There were many variants of the F3 - single and two seater, land and carrier based, Spey and M53, interceptor and ground pounders. Production lasted well into the 90's and broke the old Mirage III record of 1400 aircraft, reaching as far as 2000.
Without the "Jaguar heavy financial burden" of the late 60's the AdA could procure a boatload of them, soon joined by the RAF (Lightning replacement, no Phantoms) and also the RN.
Indeed the hopeless CVA-01 was canned as per OTL, then the cranky Ark Royal was scrapped. In their place would be an uprated Eagle, plus a bunch of Centaurs.
They would remain the mainstay of the RN carrier fleet until the end of Cold War.
While Thatcher decided to retire the Eagle in 1980, (a decision that triggered the Falkland ATL war , of course ! ) luckily enough for the RN the smaller and cheaper Centaur (three of them) proved surprisingly sturdy, and durable.
They thoroughly kicked the ass of Galtieri Argentina, sinking General Belgrano and 25 de Mayo in a hail of Exocet missiles.
The last two Centaurs (the third was retired at the end of Cold War) lasted into the early 2000's (!), long enough for the Anglo-French carriers to replace them.
This program started in 1972 as a "joint helicopter carrier" blending the now unuseful "Through Deck Cruiser" with "PH75". Exploratory talks with the Spanish and Italian navies unfortunately led nowhere. Which was not a bad thing after all when, in the 80's as both Clemenceaus and Centaurs urgently needed replacement. After the Falklands the join Helicopter Carrier morphed into a 50 000 tons CATOBAR ship that barely managed to survive the end of Cold War and entered service by 2001.
The French Navy stuck with the spey Twosader but conceded the F3 could be interesting later on. They did the swap in the early 80's.
The Spey F3 was pitched to Belgium in 1973 and they bought it, making the later Deal of the Century a three way affair between Denmark, Norway and The Netherlands. Most of OTL air forces that bought F1s bought F3 and found the more powerfuls Speys and M53s quite useful (hint: Iraq against the Iranians).
Germany per lack of a Tornado bought a mix of Phantoms and F-111s. Italy, Spain, Great Britain, and the United States got a join agreement to build uprated Harriers (think AV-8B and Sea Harrier having a one night stand) for the RAF (not the RN of course) USMC, Spanish and Italian navies. Great Britain barely managed to stay in control of the Harrier against assault of MDD. By the 80's Great Britain took leadership of the P.1216, the Harrier successor (Typhoon and F-35 blend together, somewhat).
During the 70's the AdA exploited the full potential of the F3 (450+ were procured) and upgraded it with the M53; by the early 80's the bulk of the French combat fleet was F3s plus upgraded Mirage IVs with either Spey or M53.
The Aéronavale finally bowed to the pressure, replacing its Twosaders with Mirage F3 in the late 70's. By this point the Crusader / Etendard IV split was long gone. Inspired by the USN Crusaders used in the fighter bomber role over Vietnam, in the early 70's the Aéronavale ditched its Etendard IV in favor of giving the Twosader a similar role, greatly helped by the raw power of the Spey at low level and also the two-men crew.
This was only a transitional solution: the Aéronavale turned its Twosader into ground pounders only to "prove" a naval Mirage F3 would assume both roles - interceptor and fighter bomber. The job done, the Aéronavale acepted a multirole, naval F3 - at discount prize from Dassault, since that aircraft was near the end of a massive production run. 42 Crusader and 71 Etendard IV had been procured, and the number of F3M was rounded to 100.
With the P.1216 on one side, and the F3 on the other, sucking all the money; and without the Tornado experience, any hopes for an European combat aircraft (Rafale vs Typhoon OTL sterile knife fight) was DoA.
Europe however had the P.1216 joint program that on the U.S side soon extended to a F-22 low-end companion - a F-16 / F-18 possible successor.
Dassault successive failures pitching the AdA twin-M53 F3 successors (G4, G8, G8A..) make them understood that something was wrong with the concept of a french heavy fighter. The example of SAAB Grippen pushed them in a similar direction, with a much uprated, single M53 delta-canard combat aircraft including digital FBW. That modern-day Mirage III sold like hot cakes, achieving a difficult objective -replacing the F3. It completed the P1216 pretty well.
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