Tag Archives: Panavia Tornado

Tornado und der Luftwaffe

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Check out this great AP Archives video from 22 June 1977, right at 46 years ago, showing a then very new aircraft: the Panavia Tornado, in West German service. It includes both a test bird in a bright scheme as well as one in a more standard livery.

At the 1:06 mark, an older man is seen climbing from the rear seat of the ‘Nado is Generalmajor Gerhard Limberg, then Chef des Stabes, 4th Allied Tactical Air Force (4. ATAF) at Heidelberg.

The good general had cut his teeth flying Fw 190 A-3/U3 “Jabo” (Jagdbomber), fast tactical fighter bombers– a direct generational ancestor of the Tornado– with III./ Schnellkampfgeschwader 10 (SKG 10, later S.G. 4), earning the DKiG in 1944. He was in the air and very effective at Dieppe in 1942 and later over Sicily in 1943.

Postwar, he was accepted in the renewed Luftwaffe (Bundeswehr) in 1956 as a 36-year-old Oberleutnant.

He would go on to retire as Generalleutnant, Inspekteur, Führungsstab der Luftwaffe in 1978 and pass in 2006.

The aging Tornado

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On 14 August 1974, the prototype of the Panavia Aircraft GmbH consortium’s Multi-Role Combat Aircraft, as it was called then, made its first flight from Ingolstadt Manching Airport in West Germany.

Panavia Tornado Prototype P03 (XX947)

The tri-national joint development by the BAC in Britain, MBB in West Germany, and Aeritalia in Italy– the front fuselage and tail assembly were assigned to BAC, the center fuselage to MBB, and the wings to Aeritalia– was intended to replace lots of planes in the RAF (BAE Lightning, Canberra, and Vulcan), Luftwaffe/Marineflieger (F-104G), and the Aeronautica Militare (Aeritalia F-104S Starfighter). The Royal Saudi Air Force even picked up 72 airframes in two variants, the type’s only overseas sale.

Entering service as Tornado in July 1980, just under 1,000 were built in all variants for all users. As the RAF and Marineflieger have retired theirs in 2019 and 1995, respectively, and the Saudis, Luftwaffe, and Aeronautica Militare are down to about 350 flyable examples– all slated for imminent replacement by F-35s, F-18E/Fs, and F-15SAs– the likely final swing-wing Western tactical aircraft (the F-111 and F-14 being long gone from the U.S. and Australian service while the last 45 B-1Bs are planned to phase out in the 2031-2033 timeframe) is not long for the air.

The Italians recently saluted the type for 40 years of solid operational service, having arrived in squadron strength in September 1982. 

The celebration included a flyover by 10 Tornadoes, led by a bird in a special livery.

Nothing like a Tornado burnout

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tornado afterburner
992 Panavia Tornado twin-engine fighter bombers were produced from 1979-1998. These sexy beasts are in service with the German Air Force (Luftwaffe), German Navy (Marineflieger) until 2005, Italian Air Force (Aeronautica Militare), Royal Air Force, and the Royal Saudi Air Force. They have had the opportunity to drop it like it was hot in the Bosnian War, Kosovo War, the Iraq War, Afghanistan and Libya in the past two decades, becoming the most successful European-designed and built military aircraft since the end of WWII. (Well, besides the Mirage)