Mid-August brought the 50th anniversary of the first flight of the Panavia Tornado – a Cold War-era stalwart which remains in service with a trio of nations.
Performed from Manching, Germany on 14 August 1974, the milestone 30min debut sortie of the Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MRCA) prototype was the result of a collaborative development launched by Germany, Italy and the UK in 1969.
In our 22 August 1974 issue, Flight International reported: “Because of delays in the programme the technical standard of the aircraft was considerably better than originally expected.”
The sortie was conducted with the landing gear kept down until 10,000ft, from where “the aircraft was then cleaned up and its handling investigated as the speed was increased in stages to 300kt [555km/h]”. Its variable geometry wing was kept in its fully forward position throughout the entire flight.
Additional prototypes were flown from Manching, Caselle in Italy and Warton in the UK, with the Tornado entering frontline use in the early 1980s.
In all, 992 of the type were produced, with the final example delivered to the Royal Saudi Air Force in 1998.
Cirium fleets data shows that 220 Tornados remain in service, with Germany (91), Italy (48) and Saudi Arabia (81). These include interdictor strike and electronic combat and reconnaissance variants.
The only other nation to operate the Tornado was the UK, which retired the last of its GR4-model examples in February 2019.
