History

The prototype of Dassault’s “Mystère IV” was flown in September 1952, and immediately landed them a contract from the French air force for 225 Mystère IVA’s… to be paid for by the USA as part of the NATO Military Assistance Program, though the French air force would later buy another lot of 100 Mystère IVA’s with their own funds. The new plane was the first transonic jet to enter service with the French air force, and was a complete rethinking of the Dassault Mystère II; essentially a new design, the IV had a new and more robust fuselage, a thinner wing with greater sweep, and new tail surfaces. The result resembled the Mystere IIC in a general way but had cleaner lines, more in the class of the US F-86 Sabre.

The Mystère IVA remained in first-line service with the French air force -and was even used for some time by the “Patrouille de France” aerobatics team- until the early 1960’s, when it was replaced by the Mach 2 Dassault Mirage IIIC delta-winged fighter. The Mystère IVA remained in service in the ground-attack role until 1975 (replaced by the SEPECAT Jaguar) and as an operational trainer until 1980 (replaced by the Dassault-Dornier Alpha Jet).

60 Mystère IVA’s with Hispano Verdon engines ended up being sold to Israel in 1956, where they managed to perform well against Egyptian MiG-15’s. The Indian Air Force also bought 110 IVA’s in 1957, where they were used in the close-support role during the 1965 Indo-Pakistan war; like its ancestor the “Ouragan”, the IVA proved reliable and able to take quite a bit of punishment.

The build / Controls

There’s not much to tell, actually… the Mystère is indeed a simple 1st-gen jet, so it could probably be built with a few crude bits and pieces and still be quite recognizable. But of course I had to spend (too many) parts on silly details, and so this “simple plane” struggles to meet the 650-part limit because of cosmetics such as roundels and landing gear… and then I didn’t even include the typical “Mystère IV” logo usually found on the plane’s nose.
It does have a very straightforward user manual; AG1 for air brakes -period. Other than that, there’s only pitch, yaw, roll, trim and flaps.
Oh, and you can retract the landing gear too… ;)

Armament

The Mystère IV was equipped with twin 30 mm DEFA cannons, and so is this build; with only 150 shells available and a high firing rate, a few relatively short bursts will put you out of ammo in no time -so the plane probably won’t win any dogfighting contests.
The Mystère IV was never equipped with air-to-air missiles, so it would look silly to slap on some AIM-9’s… for the sake of the challenge, a version with two Matra R511’s is available; even though these missiles were never used on the Mystère, it’s at least a plausible weapon. Note that the Matra R511 look is only a skin; the missile internals are those of the challenge’s AIM-9, and so the missiles will behave as such in a dogfight.

enjoy!