Italeri 1/32 Mirage IIIC
By Chris Banyai-Riepl
Overview
In the early 1950s, the French government issued a specification for a lightweight all-weather interceptor, and Dassault responded with a delta design. After some derivative changes, the design was finalized as a larger, area-ruled delta-winged fighter named the Mirage III. The first version was the Mirage IIIA, which first flew in 1958 and became the first European aircraft to exceed Mach 2. Following these initial ten pre-production Mirage IIIA fighters, the Mirage IIIC took to the air in 1960 and soon became the primary interceptor fighter for the French Air Force, as well as several other nation's air forces. The Mirage IIIC formed the base for a family of delta aircraft that remains in service to this day.
The Kit
Highly anticipated, this all new-tool 1/32 Mirage kit has quite a few modelers excited about the potential. Molded in light gray plastic, the kit features recessed panel lines, a complete engine, and lots of external stores. The decal sheets are expansive as well, with six options from four nations and a full set of stenciling.
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Jumping into the build, the first step is to build up the seat. In 1/32, this is a very prominent part of the cockpit, and out of the box the seat is not all that bad. There are nine plastic parts for this one seat, plus six photoetch seatbelts. The detailing is good overall, and with the belts in place will look decent enough. Undoubtedly we will see some highly detailed resin replacement for those who want to go all out, but for those who don't want to spend any extra, the kit seat will work.
For the rest of the cockpit, there is lots of raised detail on the cockpit tub and instrument panel. However the instrument panel does lack any sort of instrument face detail, so to get a good looking cockpit you will need to find some source of instruments. The instrument panel hood is nicely detailed, and the tub features separate sidewalls and a rear bulkhead. Aside from the lack of instrument faces, this cockpit will look quite nice when finished.
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Moving on to the fuselage construction, delta-winged aircraft always have a bit of a challenge here with their large wing root connection. This kit has the fuselage split into three major pieces. There are two upper halves and a one-piece lower section. The lower section gets the combined cockpit/nose wheel well, as well as the main wheel wells. Those are made up from four wall pieces to maximize the detail.
For the upper fuselage pieces, there's a fair bit of innards to put together there. The intakes include full trunking that goes back to the engine face. That engine face is just one piece to the engine assembly, which features four pieces fitting inside the two halves of the engine body. There are a couple PE parts and the afterburner petals to finish out the engine, and once done it will look pretty decent. Included in the kit is a cart to display the finished engine on, should you wish to show it off. I would have liked to have seen extra engine parts so you could finish the model with the proper parts in the fuselage and have the engine outside, but you only get a single engine face and one set of exhaust components.
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The wings feature separate main gear wells and separate air brakes that need to be set in place before the wings are joined together. Also separate are the wingtip lights, which are provided in clear. On the underside, the control surface actuator fairings are separate, as are the control surfaces themselves should you wish to reposition them. The pylons are also separate, and given the broad range of stores in the kit, you'll likely want to use these. The landing gear is very nicely detailed, with the main gear legs being built up from four pieces and the nose gear leg gets nine pieces. The gear doors all have detailed actuators, and the instructions point out decal details for all three struts.
For the underwing stores, the choices include fuel tanks, missiles, and rocket pods. There are two 500-liter fuel tanks, two 1300-liter fuel tanks, and two JL100R rocket pods as options for the inboard pylons. For the outboard pylons, there's options for either AIM-9B Sidewinders or Matra R550 Magic missiles. Finally, for the centerline is a single Matra R530 air-to-air missile. The missiles all have half their fins separate, while the JL100R has two styles of rocket nose cones.
The final steps include adding the canopy, which is clear and features lots of extra details such as rear view mirrors for the main canopy and instruments for the windscreen. The kit comes with a separate crew ladder made up from four pieces, and as mentioned earlier, there is an engine cart. This is built up from several pieces that include separate support beams, wheels split in halves, and curved support braces.
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The decal options are colorful and cover a wide range of schemes. There are three French, one Swiss, one South African, and one Israeli, all interesting in their own way. The choices are:
- Mirage IIIC – Armée de l'Air No 44, Escadron de Chasse 3/10 "Vexin" Djibouti 1980: camouflaged in middlestone, dark earth, and light blue
- Mirage IIIC – Armée de l'Air No 16, Escadron de Chasse 10/1 "Valois" Creil-Senils, France 1978: camouflaged blue-gray over aluminum, with chromate panels on the underside
- Mirage IIIC – Armée de l'Air No 17, Escadron de Chasse 2/5 "Ile de France" Orange Caritat, France 1967: finished in overall unpainted aluminum with chromate panels on the underside
- Mirage IIIC/Z – SAAF No 805, 2 Squadron "Flying Cheetahs", Waterkloof AB Pretoria South Africa 1982: camouflaged in sand yellow and olive drab over light blue gray
- Mirage IIIC – No J-2201 Swiss Air Force 1962: finished in overall unpainted aluminum with chromate panels on the underside
- Mirage IIIC/J – "Shahak 59", IAF 101 Squadron Hatzor AB during the Six Day War in June 1967: unpainted aluminum with chromate panels on the underside
The decals are superb, with excellent color, sharp details, and minimal clear film. The latter will be very welcome for those schemes done in unpainted aluminum. In addition to the individual aircraft markings, the decals include lots of general stenciling for the airframe and the underwing stores.
Conclusion
This is a great kit from Italeri, one which is a notch above their previous 1/32 release, the F-104. Careful examination of the fuselage suggests that we will see other Mirage variants in the future, undoubtedly the longer-nosed IIIE/O and perhaps even a two-seat version, a Mirage 5, and maybe even further derivatives such as the Kfir. What I would truly love to see, though, would be for Italeri to take this nice 1/32 Mirage kit and scale it down to 1/72, as it would be a joy to build a dozen of these. My thanks to Italeri for the review sample.