Part of the initial French deployment for Operation Daguet in September 1990
included four Mirage F1CR aircraft. These aircraft deployed to Al Ahsa in
Saudi Arabia alongside French Mirage 2000C and Jaguar A aircraft. This
Mirage F1CR force would be augmented by further deployments. Although the
war started in mid-January, it was not until January 26th that they were first
used in combat. Planners had wanted to minimize the risk of confusion with
Iraqi Mirage F1 aircraft. During the conflict, Mirage F1CR aircraft
performed bombing and reconnaissance sorties. They finished the war
without a combat loss.
Click on
images below to see larger images
Having
completed the Eduard Mirage 2000C and Heller Jaguar A in Operation Daguet,
the last aircraft to build for this Operation Daguet group was the Mirage
F1CR. In 1:48, the only option is the Italeri kit. The
Italeri kit is an upgraded ESCII kit with Mirage F1 CT/CR parts, new
stores, and engine exhaust. The cockpit is still bare with decals so
I replaced it with the Neomega cockpit set. Some minor improvements
were done such as reshaping the small intakes near the rear of the plane.
Otherwise, the kit was a fairly quick build.
Painting
was done using a color mixture of Model Master or Gunze Sangyo paints for
the two brown colors. When the Mirage F1CRs deployed to Al Ahsa,
they originally had their old "Chad" paint scheme and were
repainted in theater. Some aircraft had the areas around their codes
unpainted; 33-TM was such a plane. To represent this, I made some
measurements of the decal I was going to use and then painted a piece of
decal paper with the appropriate pattern and color. Then both decals
were placed on the model.
I
used a combination of kit decals and Carpena 48030 which has markings for 33-TM
which is also included in the kit decal set.
Benner
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