I was playing with the idea to convert one of the new tooled Mirage IIIC kits to a Mirage IIIE for some time. I finally did something about it during my last 3-month work assignment rotation to the Middle East last February. For the conversion, I dug up my Italeri Mirage IIIE from my stash and bought a Hobbyboss IIIC to kit bash. I have the Eduard kit as well but decided it was better to use the cheaper more available HB kit instead.

Some background on the kits

Italeri 1/48 Mirage IIIE – The kit is very much old tooling. Bad cockpit detail and raised panel lines. On the plus side, it has a nice brand new decal set with French, Spanish, Swiss and Australian AF markings.

Hobbyboss 1/48 Mirage IIIC – This is a new tooled kit which some say is a copy of the Eduard kit. Having said that, on close scrutiny, the 2 two kits have their differences mainly on the panel lines. The HB kit’s line IMHO are not as good as the Eduard’s but I decided to go with the cheaper more available HB kit just in case.

The conversion.

The Mirage IIIE differs from the IIIC in a few aspects. It has a new engine and the fuselage aft of the cockpit lengthened. The diagram below (taken from Internet) shows the difference.

The conversion therefore is quite straightforward.

Cut the forward fuselage just behind the cockpit to extend the fuselage. The length to be extended is simple. From the above you can see that the upper lip of the intake of the IIIC meets the cockpit canopy frame some where in the middle, while in the IIIE the lip is aligned to the edge of the canopy frame. So cut behind the cockpit and move it forward until the edge is aligned with the intake lip.

To add the extension glue some styrene sheet on the inside to hold the fuselage parts in their final positions. After that it is a matter of laminating styrene sheet on the outside to the required level. Then the normal puttying and sanding.

Next major modification is the tail pipe cowling.

Cut off the tailpipe cowling from the HB kit. There is a vertical panel line from the base of the vertical stabiliser which you can follow. The cowling from the Italeri comes separate from the fuselage in one piece. To ease (or complicate) mating with the HB fuselage halves, I split the Italeri Cowling vertically in half and glued them on. Notice I removed the brake parachute bullet housing first. I have also cut off the HF Radio antenna from the tail.

You can basically glue the fuselage halves together at this point. Most modellers would want to paint the cockpit first, but being away from home base, I did not do this. As you can see, It is still possible to paint the cockpit after gluing.

At this juncture, I had made up my mind that the Italeri Tailpipe (Below, Left) was a piece of junk and decided to scratch build a new one instead. I then mated it to the inner Tail pipe of the HB kit. You may want to skip this part.

After this, the Wing can be installed. The IIIE has a fuel tank in the rear fuselage. Its that torpedo like thing there sticking up it’s A**. I cut it from the Italeri kit fixed it on the HB kit. Note that will be a gap behind the forward wheel well that needs to be covered up due the fuselage lengthening.

Final step is to do some rescribing of some panel lines just ahead of the intake lip. The rest is the normal kit building process. Oh, almost forgot, the doppler fairing can be taken form the Italeri kit. But remember the Swiss and Australian jets don’t have them.

It was an interesting exercise to convert a IIIC to an IIIE. In the end it was not much of a kit bash. I only used 3 kit parts from the Italeri kit. On hindsight, I could have just modified the tailpipe of the IIIC instead of replacing it completely and the rear fuselage tank could just have been scratch built. Anyway, I just wish someone would come out with a new tooled kit soon.

Photos and Text by Scratch