laststandonzombieisland

The Dassault-Breguet Super Étendard (or SuE) first flew in 1974. It was intended from the beginning as a lightweight single-engined, single-seat, carrier-borne strike fighter aircraft to replace the older transonic Étendard IVM (Dassault’s first solely navy aircraft), which had been in service with the French Navy since 1962 on the service’s newly built Clemenceau-class aircraft carriers, the Clemenceau and Foch.

 

While the Jaguar M, a navalized variant of the Anglo-French SEPECAT Jaguar, was intended to be the Étendard IVM’s replacement, and doubtless would have been successful…

…Dassault swooped in and pulled out the W with the updated Super Étendard and the French would keep flying them for generations.

While the legacy Etendard IVM carried Nord AS.30 (529-pound warhead to 7.4 miles) and AS.20 (73-pound warhead to 5.4 miles) air-to-surface missiles or up to 3,000 pounds of iron bombs with a combat radius of about 350 miles, the Super Étendard was intended as a platform for carriage and launch of the then-new sea-skimming fire-and-forget Aerospatiale AM39 Exocet (364-pound warhead to 38nm) solid-fuel anti-ship missile, with the jet’s more advanced Agave radar providing targeting data– although mounting it required de-installation of the onboard 30mm cannon to accommodate the black boxes for its fire control system. Moreover, the Super Étendard had a low-level combat radius of 530nm while carrying an Exocet (one missile with a drop tank under the other wing).

In short, it was a game-changer for its era.

Video via ECPAD, the French military’s archives:

The French started fielding the SuE and its AM39 by 1977 and would continue to use the combo for almost 40 years, updating the aircraft four times including swapping out the Agave radar for the more advanced Anemone, and stepping up the AM39 to at least Block 2 standard.

The Exocet-Super Etendard combo, sold in the early 1980s to Argentina which had a small aircraft carrier that could accommodate them, famously saw combat in the Falklands.

• Two Argentine Navy SuEs carrying a pair of warshot AM39s caused enough damage to sink the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Sheffield on 4 May 1982.
• Two more SuEs armed with Exocets struck the 15,000-ton merchant ship Atlantic Conveyor on 25 May, sending her to the bottom.
• Two further SuEs, only one carrying the country’s final AM39, made an unsuccessful run on the carrier HMS Invincible on 30 May with the Type 21 frigate HMS Avenger (F 185) often credited with splashing the missile with her 4.5-inch gun– an impressive feat if true.

In a bit of further Gallic damage to NATO naval goodwill, Saddam’s Iraqi Air Force also used exported AM39 Exocets on its Mirage F1s and Super Étendards during the Iran–Iraq War, with two infamously being fired at the OHP-class frigate USS Stark (FFG-31) in 1987.

While the French retired the SuE in 2016, and the Iraqis returned their leased SuEs to France in 1985 and lost their F.1s in the Gulf War, the final AM39/SuE operator, Argentina, announced last month they are retiring the type as being unsupportable.

The Argies hadn’t sent their SuEs to sea for years, at least since the Brazilians– who had allowed the occasional touch and go with the Argentine Navy– retired Navio Aeródromo (NAeL) São Paulo (A12) (ex-Foch) in 2000. This puts the final seagoing SuEs as the ones retired by the French seven years ago. 

Thus: 

Of note, the Super Etendard was only made between 1974 and 1985, with just 85 airframes produced beyond the prototypes, which means everyone you have ever seen is a rare bird.

Meanwhile, although definitely an aged and arguably no longer top-tier anti-ship missile, MBDA still lists the AM39 Block 2 Mod 2 in their catalog, and various marks of the weapon are still carried in the arsenals of Brazil, Chile, Greece, Morrocco, and Peru. Notably, besides many tactical aircraft able to carry the “flying fish,” the AM39 can also be delivered by medium helicopters. Plus, the French validated that the new Rafael-M strike aircraft can carry the AM39 with a SINKEX in 2012.

But you aren’t ever going to see an airborne SuE with an AM39 again.

Thus, closing the page on that little piece of naval history.