In March 1945, Marcel Bloch came home from Buchenwald. Before the war he had been one of France’s leading aircraft builders; now his country had missed the entire first chapter of the jet age. He took a new surname, Dassault, from his brother’s Resistance code name, and set out to build an all-French jet fighter fast enough to claim the market before anyone else did.

The result flew on 28 February 1949. The Dassault M.D. 450 Ouragan, French for hurricane, was the first jet combat aircraft designed in France to enter production. It was simple, straight-winged and soon outclassed. It also went to war on two continents, flew with the Patrouille de France, and launched the family line that leads to the Rafale.

A private venture in a hurry

Dassault began the design on his own initiative in 1947, without a firm order. According to Dassault Aviation, the first drawings came out in October 1947 and construction of the prototype began on 7 April 1948. The power plant was the British Rolls-Royce Nene, already being built under licence in France by Hispano-Suiza.

The layout was conventional for its day: a round fuselage with a nose intake whose ducts ran either side of the cockpit to the Nene behind the pilot, a thin straight wing, a swept tail, a bubble canopy and tricycle landing gear. Four 20 mm Hispano cannon sat under the nose. Big wingtip fuel tanks, first seen in December 1949, became the Ouragan’s trademark.

Chief test pilot Kostia Rozanoff took the first prototype into the air at Melun-Villaroche on 28 February 1949. The French Air Force ordered 12 pre-production aircraft that August, and on 31 August 1950 came the first production order, for 150 Ouragans.

Dassault Aviation reckons its small team turned the project into reality in only 18 months. For a company that had been rebuilt from almost nothing after the war, it was a statement: France could design and build its own jet fighters again. In its definitive M.D. 450B form the Ouragan reached about 940 km/h at sea level, respectable for a straight-winged jet of its generation.

Into French service

Production was shared out across the French industry, with final assembly at Dassault’s plant at Mérignac. The first French Air Force unit to receive the type, in November 1952, was the 12e Escadre at Cambrai. In 1955 and 1956 the Ouragan was the mount of the Patrouille de France aerobatic team.

Its front-line career in France was short. The jet had been rushed into service before testing was complete, and it had a habit of snapping into a spin in a hard turn. The swept-wing Mystère IV began replacing it from 1955, and by 1961 the last Ouragans had left operational units, staying on as trainers into the mid-1960s.

aircraftube’s short film on the Dassault M.D. 450 Ouragan, from Rozanoff’s first flight in 1949 onwards.

Toofani: the Hurricane goes to India

On 25 June 1953, India ordered 71 Ouragans. It was France’s first export of combat aircraft since the 1930s, and the Force aérienne indienne named the jet Toofani, the Hindi word for a storm. Later orders took the Indian fleet past 100 aircraft.

The Toofani saw action. In December 1961 it flew strikes against Portuguese positions on Diu during the operation that ended Portuguese rule there. It attacked insurgents in Assam and Nagaland, and in 1962 it flew reconnaissance missions during the war with China.

The Mystère IV began replacing it in India too, and withdrawal from front-line service began in 1965, though the Toofani lingered as a trainer and target tug. One of them, IC554, now sits in the Indian Air Force Museum at Palam in New Delhi.

Another had a stranger fate. On 24 April 1965, a lone Toofani strayed across the border into Pakistan and was forced down by Pakistan Air Force Sabres. The pilot was returned to India; the aircraft was kept and displayed as a war trophy in Peshawar before eventually being scrapped.

Israel’s stop-gap that fought

Israel was the enthusiastic customer. Needing jets to match the Soviet-built MiG-15 arriving in Egypt, the Israeli Air Force bought Ouragans as a stop-gap until the Mystère IV was ready. According to the Jewish Virtual Library’s IAF inventory, the first one landed at Hazor on 6 October 1955, and further batches followed from French Air Force stocks.

On 12 April 1956, two Israeli Ouragans intercepted a pair of Egyptian de Havilland Vampires and shot one down, the first Ouragan kill anywhere in the world. Six months later came the Suez Crisis.

In the Sinai campaign of 1956, the Ouragans flew mostly ground attack, plus escort for the transport aircraft that dropped Israeli paratroopers near the Mitla Pass. They met MiG-15s, which were faster and swept-winged but used the same family of Nene engine, and survived. According to the Jewish Virtual Library, on 31 October six Ouragans were engaged by eight MiG-15s; one Ouragan was hit, but none was shot down. Early in the campaign, a pair of Ouragans attacked the Egyptian destroyer Ibrahim el Awal with cannon and rockets, contributing to the ship’s capture.

Six-Day War and a Central American finale

By June 1967 the Ouragan was a second-line jet, but Israel still sent it into the Six-Day War in the ground-attack role, and it paid a price to ground fire. After the War of Attrition the survivors went to the flying school to train fighter pilots, and the IAF retired the type in early 1973.

Even then the Hurricane was not finished. In the 1970s Israel sold refurbished Ouragans to El Salvador, which flew them in combat during its civil war before replacing them with the American A-37 Dragonfly.

Dark Skies tells the story of the Israeli Ouragans that faced Egypt’s MiG-15s in 1956.

The Dassault Ouragan was never a great fighter. But it was the right aircraft at the right moment: it put French industry back in the jet business, opened its first export markets in India and Israel, and gave Dassault the start of a line that runs through the Mystère and the Mirage to the Rafale. Every Dassault fighter since has, in a sense, flown in the Hurricane’s slipstream.

Sources: Dassault Aviation (MD 450 Ouragan heritage page), Wikipedia (Dassault Ouragan), Jewish Virtual Library (IAF Aircraft Inventory: Dassault M.D. 450 Ouragan), The Week (India)