Replacing the replacements

The 1977 annual of Australian Aviation & Defence Review was a groundbreaking publication for this then 11-year-old writer. I had already well and truly been bitten by the aviation bug, and had for a couple of years been writing away to aerospace companies requesting brochures and posters of their various fast jet products, most of which adorned the walls of my room in suburban Canberra.

But that issue of AADR and Jim Thorn’s excellent article The Billion Dollar Deal was the first time I had seen imagery and analysis of most of the frontline western fighters of the 1970s in one place. Indeed, as the RAAF’s Mirage replacement program progressed, that and subsequent articles were this aspiring fighter pilot’s go-to reference points for several years, and perhaps helped sow the seeds for a career backup plan.

Now 40 years later, while I will be forever only ever qualify for the ‘wannabe’ category of fighter pilot and instead went on to write about this and most other things aerospace, it is now history that the McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 was selected to replace the Mirage.