The Dassault Mirage III is a family of single-seat, single-engine, fighter aircraft developed and manufactured by French aircraft company Dassault Aviation. It was the first Western European combat aircraft to exceed Mach 2 in horizontal flight.
The first major production model, the Mirage IIIC, first flew in October 1960. The IIIC was largely similar to the earlier IIIA, being less than a half meter longer and featuring a full operational fit.
The Mirage IIIC was a single-seat interceptor, with an Atar 09B turbojet engine, featuring an eyelid type variable exhaust. The Mirage IIIC was armed with twin 30 mm DEFA cannon fitted in the belly with the gun ports under the air intakes.
Early Mirage IIIC production had three stores pylons, one under the fuselage and one under each wing; another outboard pylon was soon added to each wing, for a total of five, excluding a sleek supersonic tank which also had bomb-carrying capacity.
The outboard pylon was intended to carry an AIM-9B Sidewinder air-to-air missile, later replaced by the Matra R550 Magic and also was armed with the radar guided Matra R530 Missile on the center line pylon.
A total of 95 Mirage IIICs were obtained by the French Air Force, with initial operational deliveries in July 1961. The Mirage IIIC remained in service with until 1988.
