Dassault Mystère IV

The Dassault MD.454 Mystère IV was a French fighter-bomber of the 1950s and the first transonic aircraft to enter service with the French Air Force. It developed from the Mystère II but was in fact a new design with aerodynamic improvements for supersonic flight. The prototype first flew on 28 September 1952 and the aircraft entered service in April 1953, the first 50 production aircraft using British Rolls-Royce Tay turbojets and the remainder the French-built Hispano-Suiza Verdon 350. France ordered 223 aircraft under a United States offshore procurement contract and used the type in the 1956 Suez Crisis and into the 1980s. Israel flew it from 1956 and used it in large-scale combat in the 1967 Six Day War, retiring it on 18 March 1971, and India bought 110 in 1957 and flew them in the 1965 war with Pakistan.