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Got a bit nostalgic looking at these pictures, the old grey / green scheme in particular.
It will be a huge shame when it is finally retired in March.
It is the epitome of fast jet design to me. It looks fast and angry standing still, and when flying slow and dirty looks as solid as a brick barn. Not pretty, but brutal.
The noise is awesome too. Very distributive screech when one approaches fast at low level. You know what's coming, albeit for about 5 seconds.
Clearly, I'm getting old and seeing the world rose tinted, and nowadays all the young bucks will want to 'fly' the Typhoon or the Lightening.
But I remember when hooning about in a GR1A was the plum posting.
<img src="<img src="https://i.ibb.co/kytrZDg/images.jpg" alt="images" border="0" />" alt="Last days of the Tornado" />
Any more for any more?
I have some original piccies of the dev aircraft at Warton from BAE (British Aerospace as it was then). in the black white and red livery, compliments of my grandad.
Been at BAE Systems at Warton for 37 years this year and spent quite a bit of time on those jets.
Great product, and when you are next to one on full reheat (as we have to stop at the side of the runway when transiting from one side to the next) there is nothing quite like it. Makes your chest thump and the car shake 🙂
They will be missed, at least the Germans and Italians are still flying them.
It is the epitome of fast jet design to me. It looks fast and angry standing still, and when flying slow and dirty looks as solid as a brick barn. Not pretty, but brutal.
Another brutal jet:
With a bit of luck someone will buy one or two to keep running for flights, like the 2 seat spitfires 🤞🤞🤞
Not Tornado but my b in law was a fitter on Phantoms in their final days. He said they had to be very careful climbing on them post flight as the airframes were often slick with hydraulic and other fluids from all the leaks!!
It's the massive tail fin that does it. They look fast standing still!
Spent 7 years on bases with Tonkas. Love them. Seeing and feeling all aircraft from the 4 squadrons at Bruggen at the end of a exercise get airborne simultaneously was quite an experience
I worked on fishing boats years ago & lost count of the amount of times i'd get the shite scared out of me by one of these buggers , they seemed to like using boats for extreme low level target runs. One minute your in a wee world of your own sorting prawns or stacking creels , sound of a 6 cylinder Ford labouring away , totally oblivious to whats sneaking up behind you @ a few hundred mph.
Then Boom! 20 foot above the mast , F@£$%^&*!!!!
Soft spot for the Phantoms too.
Close up they were agricultural. But like the Tornado, had a purposeful and aggressive stance.
Are there any still flying? The Germans had some, but I think they've been withdrawn.
The Germans called the Phantom the
"Luftverteidigungsdiesel"
Which always makes me chuckle.
^ also “Eisenschwein” & “Fliegender Ziegelstein”.
Still lower emissions than a VW...
Nice, but not actually as good as the machine it replaced...
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I'm old enough to remember seeing the 1st public display of the Tornado at the Queens silver jubilee airshow at Finningley in 1977. I was impressed & have been ever since.
Mind you it wasn't as impressive as the 4 Vulcan scramble that happened that day, which was recorded as 4 on the Richter scale.
Not my photo, it was taken off the Mach Loop twitter page
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https://twitter.com/themachloop?lang=en
Might pop out there next week, there's been some good shots coming out of there recently so it seems that even now, it's getting a fair bit of use.
If you want some great Tornado photography put the hashtag #dailytornado into Twitter
While we’re doing dirty big jets, can I add an F1-11 to the mix. I remember seeing one do a ridiculously low level pass at Finningly air show, then fire up it’s afterbuners as it was level with crowds. An awesome sight
I went to USAF Mildenhall with the cubs back in the day .. we got to sit in an F1-11.
If I remember correctly, the crew of the F1-11 didn't have ejection seats/wear parachutes.... the whole cockpit module ejects !!
A pair of Tornadoes came over the house last week, I assume they were from Marham, very impressive they were too. I had no idea they were about to be phased-out.
someone will buy one or two to keep running for flights,
Lottery winners only?
Cessna hire, £150/hr
2 seat Spits, £1k-2k/hr
Torndao, £15k/hr ?
A channel hop in a Bizjet is £30k or so, that's only a couple of hours (probably some spicy landing fees in that trip).
On my yearly, I couldn't even afford to get the starter motor connected.
If you want to convert avgas to noise properly, we'll have none of this side-by-side nonsense.
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Not the sort of thing you’d want to accidentally take off in!
With a bit of luck someone will buy one or two to keep running for flights, like the 2 seat spitfires
Maybe in South Africa, the CAA won’t allow fast jets in private hands, although maybe a big industrial operator might get permission, and, just as important, be able to afford to fly them.
I have amazing pictures of when one passed below me at Glenshee when I was snowboarding, if only I could post them ....(struggling to find free reliable photo hosting)
Got a close pass from a Tornado on the M6 Southbound a couple of years back, North of the Lakes.
Heard it a split second before it went over at what felt like 6ft. It's a sight, sound and fright I won't forget.
Further back, in the early mid 80s I was a 4 year old in Ross on Wye in perpetual fear of the low level fast jets and the noise they made. I wonder if they'd have been Tornados? It was a regular fixture. The 'tank busters' (Thunderbolts?) I was less scared off, actually I think I liked them. I remember my Dad getting very excited every time we got a flyby, and rushing out side to see what it was. That and the RAC Rally. On reflection it was quite a playground.
cool!
My wife's uncle was one of the test crew, navigator I think, on the Tornado project. Any way of looking up service of a Ray Woollett with RAF and Bae?
He was a proper wing commander character - waxed moustache and plum in his throat.
Sadly we were also witness to the 1988 Millburn tornado crash, with two of the planes passing over our house seconds before the fatal crash, and the noise of the impact bringing villagers out into the street.
Noise.
I grew up along the A12 corridor, we'd get all sorts flying over our school daily - Phantoms, Buccaneers, F111s, Jaguars and occasionally Harriers too. I even saw a formation of Tornados and what I swear to be F111s, tailed by four Lightning F2a/F6s (distinctive wing shape you see). Unbeknownst to me, that would be the first and only time I ever saw Lightnings flying. BTW, having stood near a Bruntingthorpe Lightning on a taxy run, they are loud. Properly loud, I guess it's because there's no boundary air from a turbofan to dampen the noise (Lightnings were turbojets).
So, this one sunny early summer afternoon I'm pedaling home on my crappy Stratton BMX, summoned by the promise of dinner. Chips probably. I'm making my way through an alley linking Lexden Road to my estate when I heard the roar of a fast jet. It was loud, so it was either going very low or very fast.
"Whhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaammmmmmmm!"
I glanced up to see a black silhouette of a Tornado, wings fully swept. He was going both low and fast, I jumped off my bike as I had to cover my ears. It's fair to say that it made quite an impact, I can't believe that they were going that fast over a housing estate, it'd never be allowed today.
If you want to convert avgas to noise properly, we’ll have none of this side-by-side nonsense.
And, if you're posting a picture of a Lightning, we'll have none of this on the ground nonsense.
My memory of them is enjoying a midweek windsurfing session on Lake Bala. It seems they used that valley for their low flying training and you didn't get a lot of notice of their approach.
My enjoyment of being in the middle of this close up private airshow was only slightly spoiled by being dumped in the water a few times due to the turbulence.
That lightning picture from cap'n. Wow.
2 seat Spits, £1k-2k/hr
£2750 gets you a 30min experience, 20 of which are in the air.
Worth every penny. I’d pay double that to go in a tornado in a heartbeat.
I worked on the Tornado commercial team in the late 1990s, I remember trying to source some Motorola 8086 chipsets for the terrain following system on some legacy fleet which hadn’t had mid life update and had exceeded the spares plan.
Back in the 1970s and 1980s low level flying was in defined corridors and the family farm was under one of them, it was also on top of a hill so the pilots would keep as low as they thought they could get away with. You'd be working in the fields with the tractor and because of the noise of the machinery the first thing you'd know would be the plane's shadow passing over followed by a deafening roar.
Vulcans and Phantom F4s were the most common but also saw the occasional Victor. The Vulcans didn't exactly slice through the air more push it out of the way and you could hear the vortices they created several minutes after they'd passed.
In the 1990s I worked in Oman out in the desert. Nearby was an airstrip used by the RAF as a base for low flying training (it was also one of the emergency landing strips for the space shuttle because of its length) and we'd regularly get Tornados roaring past. The area was a maze of wadis eroded out of a plateau in with about 50m height difference between the wadi floor and the plateau. One day it was lunchtime and the local work crew were resting in the shade of the crew bus so I had a short walk up on to the nearest part of the plateau. I could hear that there were some planes about but couldn't see anything. Next thing two Tornados came round the corner and passed through the line of sight between myself and the crew bus. Must have been at 20-30m height!
I worked on the Tornado commercial team in the late 1990s, I remember trying to source some Motorola 8086 chipsets for the terrain following system on some legacy fleet which hadn’t had mid life update and had exceeded the spares plan.
Standard stuff for aviation.
You've probably broken a few laws by telling us that.
Moar pics needed.
"IT DONT MEAN A THING IF THE WINGS DONT SWING"
Back in the 1970s and 1980s low level flying was in defined corridors and the family farm was under one of them, it was also on top of a hill so the pilots would keep as low as they thought they could get away with. You’d be working in the fields with the tractor and because of the noise of the machinery the first thing you’d know would be the plane’s shadow passing over followed by a deafening roar.
When I was a kid in 80's we lived up on a hillside in a transit corridor (Meltham, West Yorks) and all manner of things (Tornadoes, Buccs, Harriers, F15s, F16s, F111s, A10s, Hercs) used to come over - When the roof came off it was invariably a Tornado.
I remember a few Buccaneers and F111s and the occasional A10. Hercules were common but didn't creep up on you quite the same.
We had A10's as a kid (Cambridgeshire) a few times a year - what an odd, almost eerie sound they make.
Then there is the famous A10 at Galloway, Loch Ken who managed to actually capsize a sailing boat from the sailing school - it came around end of hill and seemed to have mucked up how low it was, had to go up and over the old railway bridge that another group were canoeing under. I was off that day (one of my first ever mtb days!) but the boss was not a happy bunny - complaints (and he was retired military may) all round...
*wavy lines*
My final summer camp as a space cadet (ccf) was at RAF Chivenor - then a Hawk Flying training base. I was senior cadet on camp (woo, go me) and had an RAF Flying Scholarship, 6th form scholarship and had just won a bursary for uni.
One (and only one) flight was on offer for one cadet - and this was always the senior cadet.
Guess what happened? The officers decided that, because I was such an RAF aligned dreamboat, they would give the ****ing flight to another NCO. So my "mate" whom I spent a lot if time mtb'ing with at the time ended up getting a jolly whirl around with a qfi for an hour. ****ing ****.
Anyway, we don't talk about it anymore cos I ended up shagging his sister to try and exact a kind of revenge.
*wavy lines*
One (and only one) flight was on offer for one cadet – and this was always the senior cadet.
The senior cadet on camp at RAF Wittering sadly wasn't me (I was 2 I/C) but she got a flight in a Harrier over the Lake District. I never did end up as Senior Cadet although my final year they did get me a few things like extra Bulldog flights (the Bulldog having just come in to replace the aging Chipmunk).
One kid got a flight in a Hawk one year.
I have to admit I have mixed feelings, but it was a very single minded design and I'm very glad it never had to be used for it's design intent (knocking out as many Soviet nukes as possible on the ground come WW3).
And I remember seeing the odd one or two flying low in my youth, very impressive.