Mirage F1 (World Fighter Aircraft Collection)

A Dassault Mirage F1 fighter arrives at the 2002 Royal International Air Tattoo in England, the largest and most diverse military airshow in the world, with hundreds of aircraft from many participating nations.

Designed as a lightweight fighter to replace the Mirage III, the F1 differed significantly from earlier Dassault fighters by having aswept wing and conventional tail surfaces, rather than the tail-less delta layout of its predecessor.   Dassault later returned to the delta layout for the F1's successor, the Mirage 2000.

The Mirage F1 was highly successful, it was exported to about a dozen countries in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, including Spain, Greece, South Africa, Libya, Morocco, Jordan, Kuwait andIraq.

Able to fly at Mach 2.2, the Mirage F1 proved itself during combat operations in several wars.  South African F1s shot down several Angolan MiG-21 "Fishbed" fighters in the early 1980s.   The Iraqisused it to shoot down high-performance F-14 Tomcats of the Iranian Air Force and also hit the American destroyer USS Stark with two Exocet missiles fired from an F1.   On the other side of the account, an unarmed EF-111 Aardvark became the only F-111 Aardvark to ever achieve an air-to-air kill, by forcing an Iraqi F1 to maneuver into the ground.