The Fouga Magister was a 1950s French two-seat jet trainer, and the world's first purpose-built two-seat turbojet-powered trainer aircraft.



Design and development

In 1948, Fouga designed a jet-powered primary trainer called CM.130 for the French Air Force (Arm�e de l'Air, AdA) to replace piston-engined Morane-Saulnier MS.475 aircraft. When AdA found the aircraft lacking in power from the two Turbomeca Palas turbojets, Fouga enlarged the basic design and used the more powerful Turbomeca Marbor� engine. The distinctive V-tail of the new CM.170 Magister originated on the CM.8 glider Fouga was using to experiment with jet engines. In December 1950, AdA ordered three prototypes, with the first aircraft flying on 23 July 1952. A pre-production batch of ten were ordered in June 1953 followed by the first production order for 95 aircraft on 13 January 1954. Fouga built a new assembly plant at Toulouse-Blagnac to produce the aircraft. The aircraft entered service with AdA in 1956.

Due to different industrial mergers, the aircraft has been known as the "Fouga CM.170 Magister", "Potez (Fouga) CM.170 Magister", Sud (Fouga) CM.170 Magister" and "A�rospatiale (Fouga) CM.170 Magister" depending on where and when they were built.

The French Aeronavale adopted a derivative of the Magister as a basic trainer for carrier operations. The aircraft was designated the CM.175 Z�phyr, and was equipped with an arrester hook and a modified undercarriage strengthened for carrier operations. Thirty-two aircraft were delivered.

An improved version of the Magister designated the CM.173 Super Magister was produced from 1960. It used a more powerful Turbomeca Marbor� IV engine. Production of the Magister stopped in France in 1962 but continued to be built in Finland up to 1967.

The development of the aircraft came to an end when the French Air Force selected the Alpha Jet as their new jet trainer

Operational history

The first export customer was Germany who ordered 62 aircraft from Fouga and Flugzeug Union S�d licence built a further 188 aircraft. In addition the CM.170 was built under license by Valmet in Finland, and Israel Aircraft Industries in Israel, with a total of 929 built. Of these 286 were completed under license.


Israel
The Israeli Air Force operated a licence manufactured version, the IAI Tzukit. This aircraft participated in the 1967 Six Day War against Jordanian armoured forces, albeit with heavy casualties..


Finland
In 1958-1959, Finland purchased 18 Fouga Magisters from France. At the same time they also obtained a manufacturing license. The Finnish aircraft manufacturer Valmet later built 62 Fouga aircraft between 1958-67. The French built aircraft carried the designations FM-1...-18 and the Finnish built FM-21...-82. The aircraft was a jet trainer in the Finnish Air Force between 1958-1988. Twenty-one Fouga Magisters were destroyed in accidents, six with deadly outcome.


Belgium
The Belgian Air Force operated 50 Magisters as primary trainers. The stunt team The Red Devils also used them as display aircraft. A small number of Magisters remain in use as of 2007, as flight maintenance aircraft for senior officers. The Belgian Air Force is the last country that uses Magisters for full duty. The last Fouga still was set to perform its last flight on 27 September 2007, but the flight was ultimately cancelled.


Katanga
When Congo became independent from Belgium in 1960, the secessionist movement in the province of Katanga rebelled against the legitimate central government. Their minuscule air force was equipped with a few Fouga Magisters among other aircraft. ONUC, the UN operation to safeguard the survival of the Congolese state 1961-64, fielded one squadron of Swedish SAAB Tunnan and one of Ethiopian F-86, which consistently outperformed the Katangese Magisters in the air.


Ireland
The Irish Air Corps operated six Fouga Magisters, four of which equipped the Silver Swallows display team.



General characteristics
Crew: One or two
Length: 10.06 m (33 ft 0 in)
Wingspan: 12.15 m with wingtip fuel tanks (39 ft 10 in)
Height: 2.80 m (9 ft 2 in)
Wing area: 17.3 m� (186.1 ft�)
Empty weight: 2,150 kg (4,740 lb)
Loaded weight: 2,850 kg (6,280 lb)
Max takeoff weight: 3,200 kg (7,050 lb)
Powerplant: 2� Turbomeca Marbor� IIA turbojets, 3.9 kN (875 lbf) each

Performance
Maximum speed: 715 km/h at 7,000 m (444 mph at 23,000 ft)
Range: 925 km (575 miles)
Service ceiling 11,000 m (36,080 ft)
Rate of climb: 17 m/s (3,345 ft/min)
Wing loading: 165 kg/m� (34 lb/ft�)
Thrust/weight: 0.28

Armament
2x 7.5 mm or 7.62 mm machine guns, 200 rounds/gun
Up to 140 kg (310 lb) of weapons on two underwing hardpoints, including 50 kg (110 lb) bombs, unguided rockets, and Nord Aviation SS.11 anti-tank missiles.

Fouga CM-170 Magister Pictorial Tour

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This is just the start of this collection, many of the sites in Europe are still in low res areas, and there are a lot in private hands in the USA. If you find any, please post them here and I will keep the collection updated

Thanks Carmedic

---------------------------------------------------07/11/2009 Update ----------------------------------------------------------------

Main file updated, thanks for all your finds

Congratulations for your post !

Another excellent posting

something else to look out for

Great collection ! Heres one more

43�37'10.13"N 1�21'5.37"E

~Josie~

Thanks for the positive comments Stan, Masonic and Josie

Josie, I knew about that one but forgot to add it to the collection, it is now in there with credit to you for finding it

Cheers Carmedic

Please add this Fouga to the collection. Van Nuys is an interesting place! Fouga, Beech 18, 3 L-39s, DC-2 & 3, and Navy A3Ds! And numerous exotic single engines.

Welcome to the Fouga CM-170 Magister and Owl Collection

Its gonna be hard to geotag all the feathered ones as they never stay in one place long enough

Funny you should say that Hill was geotagged the whole time there

I visited Planes of Fame today with Delta102. There's one newer plane further east that does not show up in the older imagery. It may well be there for refurbishment.



Later we walked around to the three in a row that are still in the same place as in the GE imagery. We looked a bit closer and the northernmost of the planes seems to have taken on a boarder.


It's a beautiful little Burrowing Owl .



So now the journey has turned into a bit of nature study. Viewing some older pictures of the same planes it appears that the owl uses the access hatch as a perch, and often stays there. Burrowing Owls live in underground burrows, but could this one have moved into the jet age and be living inside the plane? Next time out there, we're going to collect a few of the regurgitated pellets and try to detect what the diet has been.

Note: I began to feel that I had hijacked this nice collection. So what I have done is to recreate the original post here and to move the discussion about the owl to Nature & Geography.

Another here

best regards

MM