Art,
Do you understand what I’m talking about regarding the hardpoints on the MiG-23 as compared to the MiG-27? On the -27 they appear to be actually on the intake trunk, whereas on the MiG-23 they appear to be almost between the intake trunk and the center-fuselage area.

Am I making sense here?

You’re making sense PII 😉 . The MiG-23 (including the flatnosed -BNs and the like) have their underfuselage pylons really under the fuselage next to the cannon, while the -27 has them under the intake ducts. As the 23BNs also have the underfuselage hardpoints rather than the intake-mounted ones, i think this has to do with the -27s larger 30mm cannon. I simply don’t think the GSh-6-30 leaves enough room to mount the pylons directly under the fuselage, and i don’t think the payload there would be really happy with that immense muzzle blast a few centimetres away…

Here a Russian MiG-27K and a Czech MiG-23BN to illustrate.

The problem with the RD33 Mirage is that in general, Mirage customers are focused more on the West. Not really easily convinced for switching to Russian gear for something which is only an upgrade program.

The only possible candidates for this program i can think of are Iran (with their 24-1 ex-Iraqi F1EQx) and Lybia. I do think that the program is interesting enough, and that F1AZ/RD33 did perform very smartly at MAKS2001. Mind you, it’s the only time i’ve seen a lightweight F1A flying as well so i’m not really fit to judge. Still, it was quite a bit more impressive than the F1Cs i got to see flying displays a lot more.

A Tu-22PD, now preserved at Engels. This was one of the aircraft which was deployed for the Afghan war in the late 1980s.

Here are two more pics, both from the #16 in the Armada series of booklets, Sverkhzvukovoi Bombardirovshchik Tu-22 by Nikolai Yakovich. The colours on the profile seem to be awfully light and high in contrast when compared with the pictures though. Still, i wouldn’t be surprised if this pattern is actually pretty close – the pic and drawing do seem to match here. Note that there is no roundel on the drawing, and i can’t see one on the photo either.

Apologies for the poor qualities of the scans, it’s one of the books i’ve bought which suffered a terrible beer-in-bag-disaster :rolleyes: … Still hope it’s helpful though.

The two-greens colour scheme is definately correct, and i believe all Iraqi Blinders were painted as such. There is a grainy pic of an operational Tu-22 during overhaul at Ryazan in Russia which clearly shows the dark colours rather than the desert paintjob.

For comparisons, i think this Iraqi B-6D Badger photographed in China before delivery shows similar colours, and likely these are the colours as specified by the Iraqis.

I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a Super Cobra painted in an olive drab color before as the USMC operates the type in the typical low-vis grey scheme.

There used to be green/black and later on green/grey/black USMC AH-1W’s, this before they got colourblind.

That bright Ching-kuo is the third prototype, and as such a testbed for AIDC. It’s not a full-standard aircraft so it’s of no use to the RoCAF, but AIDC likes to have a fast toy to play with. Even though it can’t carry as much test equipment as their AT-3s of course 😉

That’s a very interesting point – for my opinion – no other manufactor of aircraft makes this like Dassault !

Starting with the Mirage III….

Well, if you want to start from the beginning…
The MirageIII emerged from the MD.550 Mystère-Delta. Which was very roughly based on the Super Mystere, itself an evolved MD.452 Mystère, which originally was little more then a swept-winged MD.450 Ouragan…

But there are several designers/manufacturers who have a clear evolution in their designs. If you look at all the development prototypes from the MiG-15 to the MiG-21, you can easily see the evolution there. The same can be said if you look at Convair’s deltas: from the XF-92 to the F-102 (initially with the fat fuselage), the F-106, then the B-58…
Then you have the F-4 Phantom which is logically developed from the F3H Demon, or Grumman’s F-9F Panther which got swept wings and became the F9F Cougar, and was then to evolve as the F9F-9 which was later called F11F Tiger.

You have to remember of course that up until the 1960s, things were happening awfully fast in the aviation industry. Better engines, better materials, new discoveries in aerodynamics and other fields. This made it an almost round-the-clock job for the designers to keep up with the latest developments, so in stead of starting from scratch each and every time, they refined existing designs to such lengths that after some time, the original design was only hard to recognise in the ‘new’ model.

I guess that nicely illustrates which side had the truely agressive spirit 😉
Some Russian/Soviet names were pretty agressive though. The Mya-4 /3M bombers were called Molot, or Hammer. There are more.