Behind me is a Tornado GR4. It's an
aircraft that formed the backbone of the Royal Air Force in various variants for
nearly 40 years of continuous frontline service. When this was originally designed during the
Cold War its main role would have been out over the plains of Germany had the Russians attacked
potentially using nuclear weapons. By the time the GR4 was in service, it was fielding strategic
weapons that could be dropped with precision. Be it in the Gulf War of 1991 through to final
actions leading up to the type's retirement in March 2019. Wherever the RAF were used
tornadoes would have been on the front line. The Tornado IDS was designed as a
specific one-task low-level strike aeroplane with the additional capability
of elaborate advanced reconnaissance. Therefore its philosophy was of high
wing loadings, tough structural strength, very fast low level, and nobody worries too
much about what goes on with the altitude. So in the mid-1970s, the idea was that we
needed a new aircraft to be able to act as a bomber. At the time we had aircraft like
the Vulcan still in service, huge great big very obvious aeroplane. We needed something
quicker, we needed something more versatile. The UK government by themselves weren't in a
position to just go ahead and design their own aeroplane as we had done in the decades before.
So Britain, along with a number of other nations, formed a consortium that would become known as
Panavia. Belgium, Holland and Canada at one point were involved in the program. But it was only
Great Britain, Germany and Italy that actually saw a Tornado go into production the
other partners had dropped out. The whole policy of the program
whether it was right or wrong was appeasement rather than confrontation. I think
that probably is the only way you can do it in international collaboration. Having said all
that, the Tornado was worked through. It had its difficulties in development, but it turned
out to be a brilliant operational aeroplane. The overall organization and management of the
Tornado project did learn an awful lot from TSR-2 and they were all lessons of what not to
do, not so much what to do but what not to do, we're all fed into Tornado. That project
went surprisingly well considering that it was three nations and three companies all
totally different in background and culture. So the GR4 is the second main variant of the
Tornado. The GR1 came first and was upgraded as a midlife update with increased avionics
and better kit to allow it to fight into a new age. There was an F3 version. That was a fighter
version that only the RAF flew. The GR stands for ground attack and reconnaissance and the RAF
name pretty much all of their aircraft in a similar way. They are operated in quite
a number of conflicts in the sort of the modern era. They were used over Afghanistan, they
were used as our one was during Operation Ellamy which was to enforce the no-fly zone over Libya
and they were used at various other sorts of flashpoints often deploying forwards, in the case
during Operation Ellamy, to bases in Italy. The gr4 as I say really did push the RAF's airpower
right through to its retirement in March 2019. The cutting edge of the RAF's front
line to the year 2000 and beyond will be provided by the
Tornado strike attack aircraft. Capable of carrying conventional or nuclear
weapons, Tornado can strike far and wide throughout Europe from very low-level. The Tornado
is the first RAF aircraft to be fully designed for the complex age of electronic warfare
enabling it to jam or deceive enemy defences. So we're now in Airspace at Duxford with our
Tornado GR1 aircraft. Our GR1 here has quite an illustrious history which we'll have a look at
in a second, but it is now painted in a fairly standard grey colour. Before it wore what was
called 'desert pink' when it went to war during the Gulf War Operation Granby in 1991. It acquired
the later grey scheme here, after the Gulf War when it was modified to GR1B standard which had
a maritime strike capability. The Tornado GR1 when it entered service had been envisaged
to carry nuclear weapons for use against soviet block forces. Those weapons
adapted over the years from free-fall, to more sophisticated weapons, but during the Gulf
War this particular aircraft was named Foxy Killer and it flew the highest amount of bombing
missions by any RAF Tornado in that conflict. The majority of the missions it carried
out involved dropping freefall weapons or laser-guided munitions, but it started out that
conflict by operating and using the JP 233 runway denial weapon. This huge weapon Tornado could
carry a pair of these and they were designed to deny the use of a runway to enemy forces by
cratering the runway surface and spilling out anti-personnel mines to restrict the clear
up and repair organization and operations. Much like the aircraft, itself the engine
were also a conglomerate mostly produced at Rolls-Royce, but they did involve the
manufacturers from Germany and Italy. They created a company, Turbo Union, and
created the RB-199. The engines were able to carry the Tornado at very fast speeds. In the
case of the GR, at low-level it'd be unlikely to exceed supersonic speeds, but the fighter
variant adopted by the RAF as the F3 eventually was capable of up to Mach 2.2. Because
of the power of the engines as I say tornado needed a very big fin to control the
aircraft and the size of the fin above us led to one of its nicknames 'The Mighty Finn' or
depending on who you spoke to. because of its base being RAF Mahram in Norfolk, it gained
the name 'The Norfolk Land Shark' The biggest new thing was fly-by-wire. It was
a big step in the dark controlling aircraft purely by electronics. The first European
aircraft which had a fly-by-wire system. When you want to go to high speed you sweep
the wings back. That reduces the frontal area and you can go much faster, it also
improves the gust response at low level. It is an extremely good low-level attack without
any doubt at all. With the wings fully swept you can charge along at quite high speeds and
not feel a thing. For takeoff and landing, you need to have the wings out and
so you can bring it in pretty slowly. The big difference with Tornado over
other variable-geometry aircraft such as the American F-14 tomcat or F-111
is that on the wings of Tornado there are hardpoints and those hardpoints are
attached mechanically so as the wing sweeps back the pylons rotate as well which means that
the weapons we're looking straight down the nose of here remain faced into the direction of
flight whatever degree of sweep back is put on. The GR4 continued to carry a huge range of
weapons but the big difference was the weapons that was being carried on the GR4 were a lot more
sophisticated. On our Tornado just here we have a Brimstone launcher. This is one of the last
weapons that Tornado would have been equipped to carry as it came out of service. This particular
example is a replica as the RAF are still very much using these in service. They're developed
from the hellfire missile most associated probably with use on the Apache attack helicopter, but it
gave the tornado a capability to hit individual targets such as individual armour or soft-skinned
vehicles with each of the missiles. Most of the Tornado's offensive armament would have been
carried on pylons underneath the centre line. As we go up underneath the wing Tornado carries
on the hardpoints on the wing a fuel tank. The fuel tank increases Tornado's range
without the reliance or the need for too much air-to-air refuelling and on the fuel tank
pod is the place where they mount the defensive weapon. Early versions had a Sidewinder,
on Tornado GR4 we had ASRAAM, the Advanced Short-Range Air-to-Air Missile. They were only
for defence, they weren't a fighter aircraft, but it did give the Tornado some form of self-defence
capability. Likewise, on the outer pod we find the BOZ pod which deployed chaff or flare to put off
a potential missile shot coming at the aircraft. So the Tornado throughout its life always had a
crew of two. Throughout its life in the RAF they would have had a pilot who sits in the front, he
flies the aircraft he gets it to where it needs to go, and he's supported in the back by a navigator.
Now the RAF maintained the term navigator whereas really the navigation was done beforehand lots of
map reading and otherwise was actually in early versions on a cassette plugged straight into the
cockpit. But the navigator adapts to really become a Weapon System Operator so along with the pilot
that's the role that they predominantly take on. He said "Right well we've got to get rid of some
of this fuel we can either dump it or we can have some fun". So we whipped up into
the Yorkshire Dales and he said "Now I'll show you the terrain-following [radar].
We picked the Dales going across them and he stuck it into hard ride at something
like 400 knots with a 100 feet clearance. All it was was rocks, heather, rocks,
heather, rocks, heather, sky. Rocks, heather, rocks... That's all I could see
in front and he was sat there in the front cockpit with his hands on his head! So I mean
this was Tornado at its best it really was. In March 2019 the Royal Air Force said
goodbye to the Tornado. After nearly 40 years frontline action the Tornado's life had come
to an end. They've been replaced in front line service with the Royal Air Force by aircraft
like variants of the Eurofighter Typhoon, but such was the affinity that the RAF had
and the public perception of the aircraft that a number of special performances were
put on to save farewell to this aircraft. Here at Duxford, we were very fortunate for
the RAF's 100th anniversary in 2018 during our air show an example of a Tornado
flew alongside the RAF's Lancaster and the brand new variant of the F-35 basically
representing 617 squadron through the ages. With the winding down of the Tornado fleet in the
Royal Air Force aircraft and airframes began to be retired, one of which was our aircraft here.
Following its final flight it was delivered to Duxford by road bringing our collection
right up to date with an example of something that served the RAF on the front line for over 40
years and also it displays a weapon fit which is
