COBI Mirage IIIC Cigognes Set 5826

COBI's Mirage IIIC Cigognes is a 1:48 model built from 436 blocks, 29 cm long, under original Dassault Aviation licence. The wheels fold, the ailerons move, the cockpit opens for the included pilot figure and the weapons are movable. A display stand with a nameplate is included. All markings are printed.

These markings come from a television series

COBI says the livery refers to a French TV series of the 1960s, and the series in question is worth knowing about, because it did something no advertising campaign could.

Les Chevaliers du Ciel — Sky Knights — ran from 1967 and followed two fighter pilots, Tanguy and Laverdure, adapted from a Belgian comic strip. The French air force cooperated completely: real squadrons, real airfields, real Mirage IIIs, and flying sequences shot from other aircraft rather than faked.

The result was that a generation of French children grew up wanting to fly Mirages, and recruitment into the Armée de l'Air rose measurably during the run. Pilots who joined in the 1970s cited the programme by name for decades afterwards.

The stork on the fin belongs to the Escadrille des Cigognes, the First World War unit of Georges Guynemer — so the markings carry both a real squadron tradition going back to 1916 and a television series that made it famous again fifty years later.

In the COBI range

Sets 5818 and 5930 are other Mirage IIICs at this scale, and 5827 the Swiss-built IIIS. Set 2997 is Guynemer's Nieuport 17 — where the stork comes from — and 5917 the Mirage 2000-5F, which carries it too.

Specifications

Pieces: 436 · Figures: 1 pilot · Scale: 1:48 · Licensed by Dassault Aviation · Display stand and nameplate
Model dimensions: 29 × 6.9 × 12 cm (11.4 × 2.7 × 4.7 in)