Dassault MD.452 Mystère

The Dassault MD.452 Mystère was a French fighter-bomber of the 1950s, a straightforward development of the Dassault Ouragan. The first Mystère I prototype was essentially an Ouragan fitted with a 30-degree swept wing and revised tail surfaces, and it took to the air in early 1951. Further prototypes, the Mystère IIA and IIB, used the Rolls-Royce Tay turbojet built under licence by Hispano-Suiza, and a Mystère IIA became the first French aircraft to break Mach 1 in controlled flight, in a dive on 28 October 1951. The production Mystère IIC, powered by a SNECMA Atar 101D turbojet and armed with two 30 mm DEFA cannon, was ordered for 150 aircraft for the French Air Force and was soon relegated to advanced training, which it kept doing until 1963. It was never sold abroad and the better Mystère IV replaced it.