The Israel Aircraft Industries Nesher is the Israeli version of the Dassault
Mirage 5 multi-role fighter aircraft. Most were later sold to the Argentine
Air Force as Daggers, and later upgraded as Fingers.
Design and development Israel had to replace more than 60
aircraft lost during the Six Day War and the War of Attrition which followed.
Before the war, Israel began co-development with Dassault to build
the Mirage 5 and it was eventually built by Israel and named Raam in Hebrew.
Dassault Aviation had developed the Mirage 5 at the request of the Israelis,
who were the main foreign customers of the Mirage III. The Israeli Air Force
wanted the next version to have less all-weather capability in exchange for
improved ordnance carrying capacity and range as the weather in the Middle East
is mostly clear. In January 1969, the French government
arms embargo on Israel prevented the first 30 Mirage 5 aircraft plus optional
20 from being delivered and cut off support for the existing Mirage IIICJ
fleet. This was a setback for the Israeli Air
Force, who needed the new Mirage to compensate for the losses of the Six Day
War and was still using the Mirage IIIC. Israel then decided to produce the
airframes as it had the necessary plans, although Israel did not officially
obtain a manufacturing license. Officially, Israel built the aircraft
after obtaining a complete set of drawings. However, some sources claim
Israel received 50 Mirage 5s in crates from the French Air Force, while the AdA
took over the 50 aircraft originally intended for Israel.
Production began in 1969 with the first empty airframes with no weapons,
electronics, seat, or engine included, delivered directly from Dassault
Aviation. The first Raam A was delivered in May, 1971. In November, 1971 the
plane was renamed Nesher. The Neshers' airframe was identical to
the Mirage 5, but there was an extensive refitting of Israeli avionics, a
Martin-Baker zero-zero ejection seat, and improved provisions for a wider
range of AAMs, including the Israeli Shafrir heat-seeking missile. Fifty-one
Nesher fighters and ten Nesher two-seat trainers were built in all.
The Nesher had simpler avionics than the Mirage IIIC but was slightly less
maneuverable. However, it had longer range and bigger payload. The reduced
maneuverability did not prevent the Nesher from performing well in air
combat during the Yom Kippur war. Nesher production was phased out from
1978 to make way for an improved Mirage derivative that had been planned in
parallel, in which the Atar engine was replaced by an Israeli-built General
Electric J79 engine, the engine used on the American Lockheed F-104 Starfighter
and McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II fighters. The result was the IAI Kfir.
Operational history = Israel=
The first Nesher prototype flew in September 1969, with production
deliveries to the IAF beginning in May 1971, ending in February 1974. These
aircraft performed well during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, claiming over a hundred
kills. = Argentina=
The remaining Israeli aircraft were refurbished and exported to the
Argentine Air Force in two batches, 26 in 1978 and 13 in 1980, under the name
Dagger, comprising 35 Dagger A single-seat fighters and four Dagger B
two-seat trainers. They formed a new unit, 6th Air Group,
and were immediately enlisted with the help of the 8th Air Group and the
Peruvian Air Force, already a user of the Mirage 5, due to the escalating
crisis with Chile that year. During the 1982 Falklands War, they were
deployed to the southern naval airbase of Río Grande, Tierra del Fuego, and an
airfield in Puerto San Julián and despite the distance to their targets
and lack of aerial refueling capability, managed to make 153 sorties against both
ground and naval targets on the 45 days of operations. In the last role, they
damaged HMS Antrim, Brilliant, Broadsword, Ardent, Arrow and Plymouth.
Eleven Daggers were lost in combat. In the 1979 contract with IAI, the
Argentine Air Force stipulated that the Daggers would be equipped with new
avionics and HUD systems to take them to the Kfir C.2 standard. The program,
named Finger, was underway in 1982 when the Falklands War broke out. With the
war over, as some of these systems were made by the British Marconi Electronic
Systems, they needed to be replaced after an arms embargo was imposed by the
UK. The replacement of such systems took the planes to the final Finger IIIB
standard mainly by replacing the British equipment with French-built Thomson-CSF.
Variants Nesher S : Single-seat ground-attack
fighter version for the Israeli Air Force.
Nesher T : Two-seat training version for the Israeli Air Force.
Dagger A : Refurbished single-seat fighter version for the Argentine Air
Force. Dagger B : Refurbished two-seat training
version for the Argentine Air Force. Operators
Argentina Argentine Air Force: 39
Israel Israeli Air Force: 61
South Africa South African Air Force: 5
Specifications General characteristics
Crew: one Capacity: 4200kg
Length: 15.65 Wingspan: 8.22
Height: 4.25m Wing area: 34.8
Empty weight: 6,600kg Max. takeoff weight: 13,500kg
Performance Maximum speed: mach 2.1
Range: 1,300km 1186 with 4700 litres of auxiliary fuel in drop tanks plus 2 Air
to Air missiles and 2600 lb of bombs Service ceiling: 17,680
Rate of climb: 16,400ft/min Armament
up to 4200kg of disposable stores See also
Related development Atlas Cheetah
Dassault Mirage 5 IAI Kfir
References = Bibliography=
Further reading War of Attrition, 1969-1970, ACIG,
retrieved October 13, 2006 Dassault Mirage 5/Nesher in Service with
the IDF/AF, ACIG, retrieved October 13, 2006
"The Designer of the B-1 Bomber's Airframe", Wing Magazine, Vol. 30/No 4,
August 2000, p. 48 Swiss Federal Court, case of Alfred
Frauenknecht, appeal verdict, November 3, 1970.
Breffort, Dominique; Jouineau, Andre. The Mirage III, 5, 50 and derivatives
from 1955 to 2000. Planes and Pilots 6. Histoire et Collections, Paris. ISBN
2-913903-92-4. Pérez San Emeterio, Carlos. Mirage.
Espejismo de la técnica y de la política. Armas 30. Editorial San
Martin, Madrid. ISBN 84-7140-158-4. Núñez Padin, Jorge Felix; Cicalesi, Juan
Carlos; Rivas, Santiago. Núñez Padin, Jorge Felix, ed. Dagger, Finger & Mara.
Serie Fuerza Aérea 19. Bahía Blanca, Argentina: Fuerzas Aeronavales.
Retrieved 2014-08-24. External links
Mirage Argentina, el sitio de los Deltas argentinos