Tonka: The Story of the Panavia Tornado

For almost forty years, if you heard a jet thundering down a Welsh valley or saw two dark shapes hugging the hills of the Lake District, the odds were good that it was a Tornado. With its swing wings, its two-man crew and its enormous tail fin, the Tornado was the aircraft that carried the RAF through the last years of the Cold War and into every major conflict from the Gulf in 1991 to Syria in 2019.

Its crews called it the "Tonka", and they loved it with the gruff affection normally reserved for an old Land Rover that has never once let them down.

The Tornado was also a remarkable piece of European co-operation, built by Britain, West Germany and Italy at a time when that was far from obvious, and it went on to serve with four air forces and a navy. Nearly a thousand were built.

Some still fly today in Germany, Italy and Saudi Arabia, seven years after the RAF said goodbye to its last one.

This is the Tornado's story: where it came from, how it was designed, the variants and specifications, its wars, its crews, its controversies and its farewell. Every fact has been checked against at least two independent sources, among them the RAF Historical Society's own seminar on the aircraft's birth, the RAF Museum's aircraft records, Hansard, the manufacturer Panavia and the specialist press. Where respected sources disagree, we say so.

From TSR-2 to MRCA: Origins, 1965 to 1970

The Tornado was born of a string of cancellations. In 1965 the government scrapped the TSR-2 strike aircraft and planned instead to buy the American F-111K and to build a swing-wing strike fighter with France, the Anglo-French Variable Geometry aircraft.

France pulled out of that project in mid-1967, and the F-111K order was cancelled soon afterwards, leaving the RAF with no modern strike aircraft on order at all.

At the same moment, several NATO air forces flying the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter were looking for a replacement. Britain joined them, and in July 1968 six nations, Britain, West Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Canada, signed a memorandum launching a Multi-Role Combat Aircraft, or MRCA.

Belgium and Canada, who mainly wanted a simpler interceptor, left before the end of 1968, and the Netherlands followed in 1969, judging the aircraft too heavy and specialised.

That left three. Panavia Aircraft GmbH was formed in Munich on 26 March 1969 by the British Aircraft Corporation, Germany's MBB and Italy's Fiat, later Aeritalia, with the work shared broadly 42.5 per cent each to Britain and Germany and 15 per cent to Italy.

A separate company, Turbo-Union, was set up by Rolls-Royce, MTU and Fiat to build its engine, the RB199. Early on there were plans for both a single-seat and a two-seat version, but the single-seater faded away in 1970, and full development of the two-seat aircraft began that July.

In the 1969 agreement it had been called "the Panther (or such other name as may be agreed)"; the name Tornado was not formally introduced until early 1976.

First Flights: Manching and Warton, 1974

The first prototype, P.01, flew from Manching in Bavaria on 14 August 1974, with the British Aircraft Corporation's chief test pilot, Paul Millett, in the front seat and MBB's Nils Meister behind him. The flight nearly did not happen: on the morning of the flight a drive shaft on the aircraft's auxiliary power unit broke, and a German crew chief took the pieces to the workshop and brazed them back together.

The engines then started. "Aircraft handling was delightful," Millett remembered, "and the actual flight went so smoothly that I did begin to wonder whether this was not yet another simulation."

The second prototype, P.02, serial XX946, made the first British flight from Warton on 30 October 1974, with Millett again at the controls and the Italian test pilot Pietro Trevisan in the back. The workforce streamed out of the offices and workshops to watch, and Millett finished the sixty-minute flight with a roll over the airfield.

P.02 is now at the RAF Museum at Cosford. Nine flying prototypes and six pre-series aircraft followed, and the first production aircraft flew from Warton on 10 July 1979.

Swing Wings and Thrust Reversers: The Design

The Tornado's defining feature is its variable-geometry wing, which the crew could sweep forward to about 25 degrees for take-off, landing and slow flight, and back to 67 degrees for high speed, when the aircraft became a slim dart. The pylons under the wings pivoted as they swept, so that the bombs and fuel tanks stayed pointing into the airflow.

The RAF's own history of the type traces the swing-wing idea back to Barnes Wallis, the inventor of the bouncing bomb, which is a nice coincidence given that No. 617 Squadron, the Dambusters, would later fly Tornados.

It was designed above all to fly very low and very fast, at night and in bad weather, to strike targets deep behind enemy lines in a war with the Warsaw Pact. A terrain-following radar derived from the American F-111 flew the aircraft automatically over hills and valleys, and a fly-by-wire control system, developed from the one designed for TSR-2, made it stable and precise at low level.

The crew was two: a pilot in front and a navigator, later called a weapon systems officer, behind.

Its two Turbo-Union RB199 engines were compact three-spool turbofans, and they came with something almost unheard of on a combat jet: thrust reversers, the same kind of equipment an airliner uses to slow down on landing. They let a Tornado stop in a very short distance, which mattered a great deal if the runway had just been bombed.

About 2,500 RB199s were built, and between them they flew more than seven million hours.

Tornado Specifications at a Glance

The figures below are for the RAF's Tornado GR4 strike aircraft unless stated, from the RAF and Panavia. Where the sources disagree, the range is given.

Crew: two, a pilot and a weapon systems officer.

Length: 16.7 to 17.2 m (about 55 to 56 ft), depending on whether the probe is included. The F3 fighter was longer, at around 18.1 to 18.7 m.

Wingspan: 13.9 m (45 ft 7 in) with the wings forward, and 8.6 m (28 ft 2 in) fully swept.

Height: 5.7 to 5.95 m.

Maximum take-off weight: about 27,200 to 28,000 kg.

Engines: two Turbo-Union RB199 Mk 103 turbofans, each producing about 16,000 lb (71.5 kN) of thrust with reheat. The F3 used the Mk 104, with a longer afterburner.

Maximum speed: about Mach 2.2 at high altitude when clean, according to Panavia and the RAF's older figures, and around Mach 1.2 at low level. The RAF's later pages simply gave Mach 1.3.

Service ceiling: 50,000 ft.

Weapon load: about 9,000 kg (19,840 lb).

Gun: the Mauser BK-27 27mm cannon; the GR1 carried two and the F3 one.

RAF weapons over its life: JP233 airfield attack weapons, BL755 cluster bombs, Paveway II, III and IV laser-guided bombs, ALARM anti-radar missiles, Sea Eagle anti-ship missiles, Storm Shadow cruise missiles and Brimstone missiles; the F3 carried Skyflash, AMRAAM, Sidewinder and ASRAAM air-to-air missiles.

GR1, F3 and GR4: The RAF's Tornados

The RAF was by far the most varied Tornado operator. It received 228 GR1 strike aircraft, and converted some of them into the GR1A, with an infrared reconnaissance system in place of its guns, and the GR1B, which carried two Sea Eagle anti-ship missiles to replace the Buccaneer over the North Sea.

Britain alone also developed a fighter version, the Air Defence Variant, to replace the Lightning and the Phantom in defending the country against Soviet long-range bombers. It first flew on 27 October 1979.

The eighteen initial F2s arrived before their Foxhunter radar was ready, and flew with concrete ballast in the nose to keep the aircraft balanced. RAF crews, who liked to give radars names such as Blue Fox, promptly christened it "Blue Circle", after the cement company, and in January 1987 an MP repeated the joke in the House of Commons.

The radar finally arrived in the definitive F3, which joined No. 29 Squadron on 1 April 1987 and went on to equip seven squadrons.

After the 1991 Gulf War exposed the limits of the original strike aircraft at medium altitude, 142 GR1s were rebuilt between 1996 and 2003 as the GR4, with a forward-looking infrared camera, a new head-up display, night-vision goggle compatibility, GPS and the ability to carry precision weapons such as Storm Shadow and Brimstone. The GR4 would fight in Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria.

Into Service: Cottesmore, Honington and the Cold War

Every Tornado crew in the three nations learned the aircraft in the same place: the Tri-national Tornado Training Establishment at RAF Cottesmore in Rutland, which began its first course on 5 January 1981. British, German and Italian instructors taught side by side, and all of it was done in English.

The first front-line RAF squadron was No. IX(B) at RAF Honington in Suffolk, which re-formed on the Tornado GR1 in 1982, and over the following years the Tornado took over roles once filled by the Vulcan, the Canberra, the Buccaneer and the Jaguar.

The heart of the RAF's Tornado force in the Cold War was in West Germany, at RAF Brüggen and RAF Laarbruch, close to the border with the Warsaw Pact. Their job, had war come, would have been to fly very low and very fast across Germany at night to attack enemy airfields, and some squadrons were assigned to carry the WE.177 nuclear bomb, which was finally withdrawn in 1998.

No. 617 Squadron, the Dambusters of the Avro Lancaster raid on the Ruhr dams in 1943, flew Tornados from 1982 until 2014.

Blue Circle to Quick Reaction Alert: The Tornado F3

Once it finally had its radar, the Tornado F3 spent more than twenty years defending British airspace. Its squadrons flew from Coningsby, Leeming and Leuchars, holding Quick Reaction Alert against the Soviet and later Russian bombers that probed the edges of British airspace, and the shop's collection includes an F3 escorting a Russian Tu-160 "Blackjack" bomber in 2010.

The F3 was designed to intercept bombers over the gap between Greenland, Iceland and Britain, and as the RAF's official history notes, it was "never viewed as a dogfighter".

From 1992 four F3s also stood guard in the Falkland Islands with No. 1435 Flight, taking over from the Phantom, as in a photograph of Tornado F3s over the Falklands in 2007. They were replaced by Typhoons in 2009, and the last F3 squadron, No. 111(F) at Leuchars, disbanded on 22 March 2011. "The squadron will leave Leuchars with our heads held high," said its commanding officer, Wing Commander Mark Gorringe.

The Gulf War, 1991

When Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, Tornado F3s were among the first RAF aircraft sent to the Gulf, arriving at Dhahran in Saudi Arabia on 11 August. The GR1s followed, and by the time the air war began on 17 January 1991 the RAF's official historians count 49 Tornado GR1s in theatre, flying from Muharraq in Bahrain and from Tabuk and Dhahran in Saudi Arabia, alongside 18 F3s.

The GR1s were given the job they had trained for over Germany: attacking airfields at night and at very low level with the JP233, a weapon that scattered cratering bomblets and mines across a runway. The RAF judged that the attacks achieved their aim of disrupting the Iraqi Air Force, but the cost was heavy.

Six Tornado GR1s were lost in combat during the war, five aircrew were killed and seven were taken prisoner. Among the dead were Wing Commander Nigel Elsdon and Flight Lieutenant Max Collier, lost on the first night, and Squadron Leaders Garry Lennox and Kevin Weeks, killed on 22 January.

The most famous of the losses came on the first day.

Flight Lieutenant John Peters and Flight Lieutenant John Nichol were flying a daylight attack on an airfield in southern Iraq when their Tornado was hit. "We were doing 550kts at approximately 50 feet when a SAM 16 exploded in our right engine and took out the fly-by-wire flight controls," Peters later wrote. "Then AAA hit our right-hand wing, igniting the rocket propellant in our Sidewinder missile." They ejected at around 320 feet, were captured within hours and, days later, were paraded bruised and battered on Iraqi television, pictures that went round the world.

They were held for seven weeks, and afterwards wrote the bestselling book Tornado Down together.

After the first week the RAF moved its Tornados up to medium altitude, out of reach of most of the guns. At first they could only drop unguided bombs, which the official history describes as "mostly very inaccurate", until elderly Buccaneers arrived with laser designator pods to mark targets for them, followed by two experimental TIALD pods at Tabuk.

A photograph from 1991 shows a Victor tanker, Tornado GR1 and Buccaneer refuelling together. The laser-guided campaign that followed was, in the RAF's own judgement, "probably the most accurate bombing in the RAF's history".

It was not flawless: on 13 February a guided bomb aimed at the bridge in Fallujah malfunctioned and fell in a built-up area, killing civilians.

The Tornado detachments' work was recognised in the London Gazette in June 1991 with four Distinguished Service Orders for their commanding officers and six Distinguished Flying Crosses for Tornado aircrew. The Dhahran detachment alone, which grew to 19 aircraft and 30 crews, flew 653 operational sorties and delivered more than 2,000 weapons.

The F3s, meanwhile, flew more than 2,000 combat air patrol sorties protecting coalition aircraft, more than any other RAF detachment in the Gulf.

Policing Iraq and Fighting over Kosovo, 1991 to 1999

The Gulf War did not really end for the Tornado force. For more than a decade RAF Tornados enforced the no-fly zones over southern and northern Iraq from bases in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Turkey, flying some 13,200 sorties over the southern zone alone, as in a photograph of Tornado GR1s over Kuwait in 1998.

In December that year, during Operation Desert Fox, Tornado GR1s from Ali Al Salem in Kuwait flew 28 attack sorties over three nights against Iraqi targets, and every aircraft came home.

In the spring of 1999, during NATO's air campaign over Kosovo, RAF Tornados flew their first strikes against Yugoslav bridges and tunnels on 4 to 5 April directly from RAF Brüggen in Germany, supported by VC10 tankers, because there were too few laser designator pods and qualified crews to deploy them further forward.

Iraq, 2003: Storm Shadow and a Tragedy

In the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, around thirty Tornado GR4s flew from Kuwait and Qatar. On 21 March 2003, the sixtieth anniversary of its formation, No. 617 Squadron fired the Storm Shadow cruise missile in anger for the first time, and 27 were used during the campaign.

Most of the GR4s' later sorties were in close support of troops on the ground.

The campaign also brought the Tornado force its saddest loss. In the early hours of 23 March 2003, local time, Tornado GR4 ZG710 of No. IX(B) Squadron was returning to Ali Al Salem when it was shot down by a United States Army Patriot missile battery.

Flight Lieutenant Kevin Main and Flight Lieutenant David Williams were killed instantly. The Board of Inquiry found that the Patriot's system had classified the Tornado as an anti-radiation missile attacking the battery, that the crew had about a minute to decide, and that no reply had been received to their IFF interrogation, most likely because of an undetected fault in the Tornado's own identification equipment.

It named a series of contributory factors, from the Patriot's classification criteria to its rules of engagement. ZG710 was the only RAF aircraft lost in the operation. "Flight Lieutenants Kev Main and David Williams will forever be in the heart of our squadron," said IX(B) Squadron's commanding officer twenty years later.

Tornados kept flying over Iraq for years afterwards, as in the photograph above from January 2008.

Afghanistan, 2009 to 2014

In the summer of 2009 Tornado GR4s took over from the RAF's Harriers at Kandahar in southern Afghanistan, and a photograph from June 2009 shows a Tornado GR4 at Kandahar airfield.

For more than five years they flew reconnaissance and close air support for British and coalition troops in Helmand, until No. 31 Squadron flew the last sorties and left Kandahar in November 2014. "The Tornado force contribution to this operation over the last 5 years has undoubtedly saved lives," said the Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Andrew Pulford. The photograph above shows a No.

IX(B) Squadron Tornado training over north-west England in October 2012, preparing for its own Afghan deployment.

Those years also brought a grim reminder of the risks of peacetime flying. On 3 July 2012 two GR4s from Lossiemouth collided over the Moray Firth, killing Squadron Leader Samuel Bailey, Flight Lieutenant Hywel Poole and Flight Lieutenant Adam Sanders.

The Service Inquiry found that the crews had not recognised their converging flight paths, and criticised the repeated delays to fitting a collision warning system, which it said had been "delayed, deferred and at one point deleted".

Libya, 2011: The Longest Raid Since the Falklands

On the night of 19 to 20 March 2011, as the international campaign to protect Libyan civilians began, Tornado GR4s took off from RAF Marham in Norfolk, flew to Libya, launched Storm Shadow missiles at Libyan air defences and flew all the way home. "The fast jets flew 3,000 miles from RAF Marham and back," the Defence Secretary, Liam Fox, told the country, "making this the longest range bombing mission conducted by the RAF since the Falklands conflict." In the same statement he noted that the frigate HMS Cumberland was in the region, ready to support operations.

Tornados then moved to Gioia del Colle in southern Italy, flying over Libya until the operation ended that autumn, as in a photograph of Tornado GR4s over the Mediterranean in March 2011. By the end of the campaign they had flown nearly 1,500 sorties and 7,700 hours, their RAPTOR pods had photographed nearly 48,000 points of interest, and their most used weapon had been the Paveway IV bomb, alongside the Brimstone missile.

Syria and Iraq: The Final Campaign, 2014 to 2019

The Tornado's last war began on 27 September 2014, when two GR4s flew an armed reconnaissance mission over Iraq from RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus against the so-called Islamic State. Over the following four and a half years they carried out several hundred air strikes over Iraq and Syria, mostly with Paveway IV bombs and Brimstone missiles, flying from Akrotiri.

On 31 January 2019 two Tornados flew the type's last operational sortie from Akrotiri, and the detachment came home to Marham a few days later. "The Tornado Force has been continuously deployed on operations since 1990," said the Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Hillier. It was a remarkable record: almost three decades without a break.

Farewell to the Tonka, 2019

In February 2019 the RAF gave the Tornado a farewell tour, with specially painted jets flying over the bases and places that had meant most to it. On 21 February Sir Stephen Hillier, himself a former Tornado pilot, led the final flypast over Leuchars, Lossiemouth and Tain. "Final flight in the mighty Tornado," he wrote afterwards: "2,170 flying hours ... 11,932 days from first flight to last!"

The very last RAF Tornado flight came on 14 March 2019, when ZA463, the oldest airframe still in service, landed at Marham for the disbandment of Nos. IX(B) and 31 Squadrons. "The skies over Norfolk and the U.K. are going to be a lot emptier without her," said its pilot, Squadron Leader Ian Dornan.

The Tornado left RAF service at the end of March 2019, forty years after it arrived, and the Eurofighter Typhoon took over all of its remaining tasks.

Several RAF Tornados survive in museums, including GR1B ZA457 at the RAF Museum in London. In the Gulf its crews named their aircraft after characters from Blackadder, and ZA457 is still known as "Bob", after the young woman who disguises herself as a boy to join Edmund's household.

It flew 39 missions over Iraq in 1991, including two JP233 attacks on the first night.

Germany: The Tornado's Biggest Customer

West Germany ordered more Tornados than anyone, around 359 in all, for both the Luftwaffe and the Navy. The Marineflieger flew its Tornados from Jagel and Eggebek in Schleswig-Holstein as maritime strike aircraft until 2005, when the last two left for the Luftwaffe.

The Luftwaffe also had 35 Tornado ECRs built, an electronic combat version designed to hunt down enemy radars with HARM anti-radiation missiles.

It was those ECRs that took Germany back to war. During NATO's air campaign over Kosovo in the spring of 1999, German Tornados flying from Piacenza in northern Italy fired 236 HARM missiles at Yugoslav air defences, in what the Bundeswehr describes as its first active participation in combat operations since the Second World War.

Later, German reconnaissance Tornados flew over Afghanistan from Mazar-e Sharif between 2007 and 2010, and over Syria and Iraq against the Islamic State from 2016 to 2020, first from Incirlik in Turkey and then, after a diplomatic row that saw Turkey bar German MPs from visiting their own troops, from Jordan.

Germany's Tornados are still flying in 2026, and they have one job that makes them unusually hard to replace: they are the aircraft assigned to carry American B61 nuclear bombs under NATO's nuclear sharing arrangements. That is why, in March 2022, Germany chose to buy the American F-35A, the only aircraft that could take on the role without years of delay.

The Luftwaffe plans to retire its last Tornados in 2030, and has marked the type's final years with not one but two solo display teams.

Italy: Locusta and the Only Italian Prisoners of the Gulf War

Italy received 99 Tornados, the first arriving at Ghedi in August 1982, and later converted sixteen of them to the ECR standard. Eight Italian Tornados went to the Gulf in 1990 under Operation Locusta, and on the first night of the air war, 17 to 18 January 1991, severe turbulence stopped all but one of the eight Italian aircraft from refuelling on the way to the target.

That single Tornado pressed on alone, bombed an Iraqi ammunition depot and was shot down seconds later. Its crew, Major Gianmarco Bellini and Captain Maurizio Cocciolone, ejected and were captured, and Cocciolone's bruised face was shown on Iraqi television.

They were released after 47 days, the only Italian prisoners of the entire war.

Italian Tornados went on to fly over Kosovo, Afghanistan, Libya, and Iraq and Syria from Kuwait. For ten years from 1995 Italy also flew 24 RAF Tornado F3s on lease as a stop-gap until the Eurofighter arrived, returning them in 2004.

In 2026 the last Italian Tornado unit, 155° Gruppo at Ghedi, is still flying the type as Italy moves to the F-35A.

Saudi Arabia and the Al Yamamah Deal

Saudi Arabia was the only export customer ever to receive the Tornado (Oman ordered eight fighters but cancelled), and the deal that brought it there remains one of the most controversial in British history.

Under the Al Yamamah agreements of 1985 and later years, Saudi Arabia bought 96 Tornado IDS strike aircraft and 24 ADV fighters, along with Hawk trainers and a great deal of support, and paid in large part with oil, hundreds of thousands of barrels a day marketed on its behalf. The last Tornado ever built was delivered to Saudi Arabia in September 1998.

Allegations of bribery followed Al Yamamah for years. The Serious Fraud Office opened an investigation and then, on 14 December 2006, dropped it on grounds of national and international security, a decision the High Court later found unlawful before the House of Lords overturned that ruling.

The National Audit Office's own 1992 report on the deal was never published, the only one in its history, until a copy surfaced in 2024. In 2010 BAE Systems pleaded guilty in the United States to charges of conspiracy and paid a $400 million fine.

Saudi Tornados flew around 650 strike sorties in the 1991 Gulf War and have since been used over Yemen, where one was lost in February 2020. The ADV fighters were retired by 2006 and replaced by Typhoons, but the upgraded IDS fleet is still flying in 2026, seven years after the RAF retired its own.

Why the Tornado Still Matters

The Tornado was built for a war that never came, a desperate low-level fight across the plains of northern Germany, and then spent almost thirty years fighting wars nobody had planned for, from the deserts of Iraq to the mountains of Afghanistan. It was noisy, thirsty and demanding, and its crews adored it.

For a generation of people who grew up near Marham, Lossiemouth or Leeming, or who stood on a Welsh hillside at the Mach Loop waiting for one to scream past below them, it was simply what a fast jet sounded like.

It also carried a great many people through a great deal of danger, and some of them did not come home. Our collection of Tornado photo prints covers the type from the Cold War to its farewell, including a GR4 thundering through the Mach Loop in Wales, a Tornado flying over the Shard in London, and an F3 escorting an E-3D Sentry.

Every photograph in this article is available as a print, along with the rest of our RAF aircraft prints from 1971 to 2000.