Farewell RAF Tornado

There will be much online about the retirement of the Tornado from RAF service.  Global Aviation Resource has been putting together some great information on the history of the jet in service and I would recommend you take a look there if you are interested.  I am not going to repeat the information about the history of its service.  However, I do have a history with the jet.  It was entering service just as I was getting very in to aviation.  Then I ended up working on the program undertaking handling clearances for different configurations and clearing urgent changes that were implemented for the first Gulf War.

I figured I would share a few pictures of Tornados.  These are all the IDS version of the jet be they GR1 or GR4.  I haven’t included the ADV jets since they went away a while back.  Some of these shots are scans of old negatives and aren’t the greatest quality but they are part of the early life of the jet.  Some others are more recent.

I will always have a soft spot for the Tornado.  It remains in service in Germany, Italy and Saudi Arabia but for the RAF, the service that drove the aircraft to be a more complex jet than the other partners initially wanted, it is now history.

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