Mirage IIIC

This page assumes you are here regarding the Mirage IIIC for War Thunder. This quick information page here is approximately correct regarding patch 1.101.

Changing out the gunsight

First thing first, I highly recommend you to swap out the stupid default gunsight.

1. Create a new user skin by going to your aircraft customisation mode (where you slap decals on your plane) by clicking the magic wand button.

2. Navigate to your installation folder/War Thunder/UserSkins/Mirage IIIC and open the blk file, delete the other images that was created because you don't need them.

3. In the .BLK file, remove everything below name:t="user" and add the following: (Thanks to =WoVi= Defbond for these lines, extracted from his discord server's placeholder userskin package)

replace_tex{

  from:t="csf_92a_gyro_collimator*"

  to:t="beauduin_t100_fixed_collimator*"

}

replace_tex{

  from:t="csf_92a_fixed_collimator*"

  to:t="aim_1_collimator*"

}

Done! If you want to keep a user skin you already own, just copy those lines over. Basically these lines just swap out the tiny bracket ( ) fixed crosshair with a more visible green one, that's important for what I'm about to cover.

Weaponry

2x DEFA Cannons - Basically your usual copy paste ADENs of the UK tree. I've actually found them quite alright, but the american revolver 20mm cannons are still better imo simply because they have higher velocity and they consistently wreck shit with about 3 localised hits from the 4 cannons if you're using AP (Ditch the HE if you're using those cannons or the vulcans) while the DEFAs require 2 localised good hits to knock out a fighter which isn't bad if you have 4 cannons, but the Mirage III only has 2. On the plus side the DEFA's HE shells are as good as the AP shells, so I generally just take AP since they do the job somewhat equally well.

Missiles

Aim-9B - The aiming point on the green crosshair is at the last bottom notch before the dotted region, as in the one just below the glide angle point in the screenshot below. I've actually found aim-9Bs to be more reliable than magics at ranges closer than 500m because they start off slower, and the seeker fov is larger than the later missiles you get access to, but the nose-down attitude which they're mounted can cause a bit of annoyance at times, but other times you're actually thankful you have them mounted pointing down.

Matra 530 series - In-game, they perform like lighter, slower sparrows. These actually fly as slow as aim-9Js and magics, but they have 6 seconds of fuel instead of the 3.5 seconds that the aim-9Js and 4 seconds that the magic gets. The difference between the regular 530 which you research first and the 530E which you research later is the guidance system. The 530E carries the same seeker as the 550 "Magic" but the regular 530 has a radar reflection seeker, which works way more reliably than sparrows, but its range is limited to about 14km at 5000m by the seeker head (it can't see anything further than this, you need to be within ~12km to actually get a confident lock), and is effective up to around 8km in a head-on and 4km chasing in most circumstances which is actually rather small with very little benefit over the 530E for the pain of having to use the RADAR which has no boresight capability (i.e. you can't lock onto targets until you have successfully search-scanned for them). The 530E however has the capability for you to launch them at incredible far off-boresight angles without going stupid as quickly as the sparrows.

Because the 530 is rather slow for a medium ranged fox 1 missile and because it is able to do 15 Gs at such a speed, it's actually incredibly easy to make them bleed energy by zig zagging with a period of about 4 seconds, which limits their effective rear aspect range to about 3km. At that point having R-60s (which got buffed speed and tracking wise recently) or aim-9Js is probably just as good.

The neutral mounting angle is higher than the aim-9B, it sits at the glide impact point indicated in the screenshot below.

530E has an approximate half second delay before guiding like the Aim-9B/D/E.

While the 530 has 10.37 effective TNT filler, they still don't one-shot all aircraft all the time but the sparrows which the americans get (which have 11.52 effective TNT) is fairly close. The 530s don't guide onto the target that well compared to the sparrows with a good lock, they kinda lag behind like most IR seekers in the game to date. Easiest way to evade a 530 is to just go up or turn into them.

Matra 550 "Magic" - Basically longer burning faster aim-9Js in a nutshell. They fly slightly faster than the aim-9Js but flight path wise they fly basically identical to them. The main selling point is that because they're slightly faster with a little more burn time, the range is roughly 40% bigger than aim-9Js. If you're faster than a subsonic and you get a lock, the missile usually has more than enough energy to hit that target. The magic's IR seeker (And thus the 530E which uses the same seeker in WT) is uncaged and has a rough FOV equivalent to the aim-9D/E/J.

Like the 530 series, the magic's seeker sits higher than the aim-9 and sits at the glide impact indication point.

Also, additionally like the R-60s, the magics guide almost immediately straight after launching off the rail, but like the aim-9J and the old R-60 and aim-9L, they take quite a bit of time to wake up and start aggressively maneuvering, so you gotta lead them quite a fair bit.

AS-30 Nord

I haven't used these yet. I've used the AS-20 Nords on the German G.91 R/3 before, but apparently the AS-30s have 4x the explosive filler at 126kg TNT and do 101mm of RHA penetration instead of the AS-20's 83mm, so that's quite a jump and puts them on a competitive level with the AGM-12C Bullpups. Supposedly the AS-30 flies a little slower than the AS-20 at 500m/s. You only get one shot though.

Performance and Speed Limitations

Stall Speed: ~105 knots in clean configuration when nearly empty on fuel, roughly 125 knots full.

Minimum Rotate Speed: ~155 knots with heavy payload, 130 knots empty. These numbers are the limits at which you don't have enough lift to be airborne while your tail is is about to strike the runway. Be careful on landing and take-off with the flip-floppy nose effect and the lack of flaps, I recommend you do your landing approach so that when you reach 50 foot above the runway, you should be around 190 knots IAS when heavy and 160 knots when empty. Likewise you can use those numbers for your take-off safety rotate speeds.

Maximum Drogue Chute Limit: 155 knots.

Maximum Gear Down Limit: 240 knots. Advise to get gear up by 220 knots to avoid losing them.

No flaps available.

G Tolerance: About the same as any other jet fighter (+13 to -4). It does not like to do inverted spin-outs at high speeds like the MiG-21 flight model because it will over negative G.

Air Brakes: Quite good actually. But your wings are better air brakes. With 2x non-linearity you can trim up to 25% and just yank with no fear of wing rips, but it's much harder to bleed enough energy at once that you won't G-LOC from the short high G duration. Or maybe it's because I'm starting from a level 1 crew, lol.

Turn Time: Sustained turn time is actually fairly decent, better than a MiG-21 MF, should be somewhere between the Su-7 and the MiG-19PT. It's competitive enough to fight most transonics but you won't be outturning sabredogs. I thought the Su-7 confidently outturned the mirage when I got it, but I'm beginning to question that now that I have the mirage. The MiG-19 can most certainly still outturn the mirage, but the mirage being light as heck is capable of just guns dancing its way through or running off straight during a turnfight then turning back to make the mig-19 have to trim to turn around and you're out of their range again. This is something the MiG-21 wasn't good at since the MiG-21's best thrust is at like mach 0.85+ while the Mirage's engine thrust is better around mach 0.75.

Emergency/Rapid Mach 1 to Touch-down: You only need one 100 degree turn to get down to a decent approach speed of about 180-220 knots. Throttle down, pop air brake out and trim up to 25%, and yank hard. You can increase the trim up to 35-40% while bleeding but make sure you're below mach 0.85/500 knots when you start trimming further otherwise you'll risk a quick rip. If you're still a bit fast, try not to do what I did and cobra into the sand, but do some S-turns. The mirage III isn't afraid to bleed speed, but watch that tail and wings because they might hit the ground before your wheels do. Don't let your airspeed drop below 220 knots until you have clean visual of the runway or you're in for a hard day.

Equipment

The Mirage IIIC has a basic scan and lock RADAR with IFF capabilities. Don't let the range scale fool you, I'm pretty sure its bugged and is only limited to 20km scan range at the moment. However the aspect options makes the radar much more useful than the phantom's radar at these ranges because you can limit your scan to 60 degrees with 5 degrees pitch variation up to 120x10 degree fov. Despite it being limited to 10 degrees pitch variation, you can actually pick up targets to like 50 degrees above your nose using the scan if you're within about 1km in a dogfight although don't rely on it. Tracking angular bounding box is roughly 120 by 120 degrees. Don't rely on a track to guide your magic seekers because it's incredibly unreliable in a dogfight, it's better to just do it as if it was caged then lead.

Gliding

Now first thing first, Mirage IIIC sucks at gliding unlike the MiG-21 Fishbed, F-4 Phantom and the F-100 Super Sabres which for some reason all have some of the best glide ratios in the game, even better than the horten and the Me 163 which were ironically originally designed as "gliders".

1. Get your airspeed down to approximately 300 if you are faster by climbing then gently dip your nose down below the horizon. If you're slower than this, gently pull the nose up to the horizon and towards the desired landing area.

2. The horizon should match approximately with the lines in the picture below depending on how high you are from the ground. The reason why it varies isn't because the earth is round in WT (it's flat like in most games), but rather because there's a limited draw distance. The nose should be roughly 4 degrees below the horizon.

3. Your airspeed should be roughly 250-300 knots depending on how heavy you are and if you have draggy payloads on. It is better to aim slightly over than slighly under your glide speed, so go for around 260-270 knots even when empty.

    This will give you a glide descent angle of roughly -6.5 degrees. Yes it is that terrible. For reference the MiG-21's flight model glide descent angle is roughly 3.8 degrees despite being notoriously bad IRL, lulz. I personally trim for +15% with 2x non-linearity.

4. The second major notch down the crosshair gives you the approximate glide impact angle, so your desired landing point should be roughly in that area or closer or you're kinda screwed.

    If your airstrip is more than 2km ahead of this point, you might as well J out and not waste your time gliding.

Handling Characteristics

Yes, it can cobra. If you want to go past a cobra, push the nose down then yank hard below 250 knots and you should be flying backwards at speeds slower than 150 knots. If you're slower than 80 knots when you recover, you're going to have a bad day recovering from that dive.

Like with the MiG-21, I recommend using a pitch modifier of 0.93 when using an on-linear value of 2x. This will prevent you from excessively stalling out in most situations.

The mirage III also does not naturally stall without aggressive input below 150 knots, but your angle of attack should already be near optimum at those speeds so it's not like you have an issue like the Su-7 with flaps down where your angle of attack isn't great enough to make the most out of the aircraft.

Don't use air brake when forcing a MiG to overshoot, just throttling down to about 80% and aggressively maneuvering is good enough.

Handling wise it's kind of like a good combination between the MiG-21/Jaguar flight model and the Saab J-35D Draken.

Nose is a bit bouncy like the F-100D, so be careful when landing this plane and don't hit the tail (see Performance section)