AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 87 / 125

Plate 87 of 125 · Early jet age · Jet trainer

Fouga CM.170-2 Super Magister

CM.170-2 Super Magister, painted as 218, a Fouga CM.170-2 Super Magister of the Irish Air Corps: the Marboré VI powered version of the French two-seat jet trainer, with tandem bubble canopies, twin wing-root engine nacelles, wingtip fuel tanks and the type's butterfly V-tail; one of six bought in 1975, flown by No. 1 Fighter Squadron and the Silver Swallows display team, and restored by the Ulster Aviation Society at Maze Long Kesh after its arrival in 2021; painted as it is shown there: aluminium overall, with a fluorescent orange nose, tip tanks, nose-wheel doors and rear-fuselage band, a black anti-glare panel ahead of the windscreen, black ‘218’ on the nose and tail cone and green, white and orange roundels on the rear fuselage and wings, with red covers in the intakes and jet pipes; the wing roundel positions are estimated from oblique photographs and the starboard markings are assumed to mirror the port side.

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as 218, a Fouga CM.170-2 Super Magister of the Irish Air Corps: the Marboré VI powered version of the French two-seat jet trainer, with tandem bubble canopies, twin wing-root engine nacelles, wingtip fuel tanks and the type's butterfly V-tail; one of six bought in 1975, flown by No. 1 Fighter Squadron and the Silver Swallows display team, and restored by the Ulster Aviation Society at Maze Long Kesh after its arrival in 2021; painted as it is shown there: aluminium overall, with a fluorescent orange nose, tip tanks, nose-wheel doors and rear-fuselage band, a black anti-glare panel ahead of the windscreen, black ‘218’ on the nose and tail cone and green, white and orange roundels on the rear fuselage and wings, with red covers in the intakes and jet pipes; the wing roundel positions are estimated from oblique photographs and the starboard markings are assumed to mirror the port side. Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (872 KB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (); engine, crew and dimensions are for the CM.170-2 Super Magister modelled here.

History

The Super Magister

The Magister was designed by Pierre Mauboussin and Robert Castello at Air Fouga, a railway engineering firm at Béziers that had built a series of small jet-powered gliders. Their trainer kept the gliders’ V-tail and slender wing and added two small Turbomeca Marboré turbojets in the wing roots, with the pupil and instructor in tandem under separate bubble canopies. The prototype flew on 23 July 1952, and the French Air Force ordered it as its standard basic jet trainer, the first aircraft built from the start for that job to go into large-scale production.

The Magister entered French service in 1956, and its production passed to Potez and later to Sud Aviation and Aérospatiale as Fouga was taken over. Licence-built aircraft came from West Germany, Israel and Finland, and in all some 930 were built for more than a dozen air forces, with a navalised version, the CM.175 Zéphyr, for the French Navy. Israeli Magisters flew ground-attack sorties in the 1967 war, and the Patrouille de France flew the type from 1964 until the Alpha Jet replaced it in 1981. The CM.170-2 Super Magister had the more powerful Marboré VI.

Ireland bought six Super Magisters in 1975 to train its jet pilots and give the Air Corps a light armed jet after the Vampires were retired. They flew with No. 1 Fighter Squadron and the Advanced Flying Training School at Baldonnel, and from 1986 the Silver Swallows display team flew them at air shows in Ireland and Britain. The last were withdrawn in 1999, and the Air Corps has not flown jets in a combat or training role since.

This airframe

Super Magister 218

218The airframe modelled

218 is one of the six Super Magisters delivered to the Irish Air Corps in 1975, and it flew with No. 1 Fighter Squadron and the Silver Swallows. After retirement it was an instructional airframe at Shannon from 2002, returned to Baldonnel in 2018 and was given to the Ulster Aviation Society in November 2021; the society’s volunteers restored it in 2022 and it is displayed at Maze Long Kesh. The model shows it as photographed there in 2024: aluminium overall, with a fluorescent orange nose, tip tanks, nose-wheel doors and rear-fuselage band, a black anti-glare panel ahead of the windscreen, black “218” on the nose and tail cone, green, white and orange roundels on the rear fuselage and wings, and the red covers that are always fitted in the intakes and jet pipes. The wing roundels’ positions are estimated from oblique photographs, and the starboard markings are assumed to mirror the port side.

See it at Ulster Aviation Society (Maze Long Kesh)

Where to see one

In the gazetteer

The gazetteer records the Super Magister in 2 UK collections. The airframe modelled here is marked.

Every airframe and serial All 125 plates

Profiles and models are procedural interpretations built in Blender from published dimensions, three-view drawings and photographs of each airframe. Treat the museum aircraft as the reference.