Super Mirage 4000, the unfulfilled dream, The Super Mirage 4000 as told by its engineers and pilots

Launched on the personal initiative of Marcel Dassault, the Super  Mirage 4000 is the last European combat aircraft to be financed by  its manufacturer’s own funds. After summarizing several years of  interviews with the main protagonists of the program, Alexis  Rocher takes the reader to the heart of the technological arbitrations that presided over the design of the most powerful aircraft of  its time.

Promoted in turn as a successor to the Mirage IV nuclear bomber,  then offered for export as a very high-performance fighter-bomber,  the Super Mirage 4000 was likely to alter the geostrategic balance  in the Middle East. In this respect, it probably frightened some people. In France and elsewhere.

This is the first book ever published on this extraordinary aircraft,  without which the Rafale would not be today’s world-renowned  technological and commercial success.

The author takes us through the emotions of the first flight and the presentations at trade shows and to foreign delegations, the differences of opinion at the highest levels of industry and politics, the  dashed hopes of export success, and finally the discreet efforts of  those who enabled it to rest in good condition today at the Musée  de l’Air at Le Bourget.

Richly illustrated with often previously unpublished photos, some  from the personal collections of those involved in the program, this  book provides a better understanding of the French aeronautical  landscape in the 80s.

A historian, Alexis Rocher is editor-in-chief of the monthly Le Fana  de l’Aviation and the quarterly Planète Aéro.