COBI Mirage IIIS Swiss Air Force Set 5827

COBI's Mirage IIIS Swiss Air Force is a 1:48 model built from 453 blocks, 29 cm long, under original Dassault Aviation licence. The landing gear folds, the ailerons move, the cockpit opens for the included pilot figure and the weapons are movable. A brick display stand with a nameplate is included. All markings are printed.

The Mirage Affair

Switzerland ordered 100 Mirage IIIs in 1961. It received 57, and the difference caused one of the biggest political scandals in modern Swiss history.

The Swiss did not buy the French aircraft as it came. They rebuilt it: a strengthened airframe for rough alpine strips, American Hughes TARAN radar and fire control instead of the French system, Sidewinder missiles, and licence assembly at the federal aircraft works in Emmen.

Every one of those changes cost money, and by 1964 the programme had overrun its budget by a figure in the hundreds of millions of francs. Parliament had not been told. The resulting inquiry forced the resignation of the head of the air force and the defence minister's chief of staff, produced a parliamentary commission with powers rarely used in Switzerland, and permanently changed how Swiss defence procurement is scrutinised.

The order was cut from 100 aircraft to 57. It is the reason Swiss arms purchases are now subject to referendum — the political machinery that rejected the Gripen in 2014 and barely passed the F-35 traces back to this aeroplane.

The aircraft

36 IIIS fighters and 18 IIIRS reconnaissance versions, the latter with cameras in place of the nose radar. They served from 1967 to 2003, replaced by the F/A-18C.

In the COBI range

Sets 5818 and 5930 are French Mirage IIICs at this scale. Set 5857 is the F-5E Tiger II in Patrouille Suisse colours — the aircraft Switzerland also could not manage to replace.

Specifications

Pieces: 453 · 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)