Tornado Themed Build?

[kitnut617]

And the UK didn't get F-15s because we had to make-up the promised numbers on the Tornado.

Well what the references say is that the Government were concerned with the UK losing valuable aero designers and engineers from their pool if they went with the F-15. They came up with 'it didn't have the range' excuse to not go with it. 'course the F-15's with conformal and two (three) big tanks that are used today don't seem to have any problem with range, and if you follow the arguments over on SPF about how the F-35 doesn't compare to the F-15 in range. it just makes you wonder.

At the time, the RAF/Ministry hadn't looked at the conformal tank option on the F-15, even though it was just being tested by McDD on a F-15B at the very same time. The tank was their answer to having to delete a fuselage tank the rear seater took up.

For what it's worth, this is my take on a RAF Eagle, it has a Tornado F.3 nose and conformal tanks. Went with Brit engines too.

[AeroplaneDriver]

Let's not let the Tornado naysaying cloud the fact that it served for 40 years and acquitted itself quite well in combat in multiple theaters for most of those 40 years. 

I think probably the WE.177 and Sea Eagle were the only normal Tornado weapons never fired in anger during its career.  It started with dumb bombs and JP233s in Iraq and ends its service with the RAF deploying the most advanced small guided air-to-surface missile in service, and lets not forget long range strike missions with Storm Shadow I the very recent past.  Shame the F.3 never got a 'kill' but still it's hard to not consider the IDS one of the great success stories of modern combat aviation...

On a different note I can now report with confidence that the Revell 1/48 F.3 is an absolute PIG of a kit.   

[kerick]

I'm thinking about an ADV in 1/72nd scale in Canadian markings. Did a little research and found a deep discussion on britmodeler about which was better, the Hasegawa or Italeri. Everyone agreed don't bother with the Monogram kit.

[AeroplaneDriver]

Monogram didn't make an ADV.  I've not done the Italeri !/72 but the Hase isn't bad for its vintage.  Not perfect by any means, but not bad.  I think the only really great Tornado kit ever is the Revell 1/72 GR.1. 

[Dizzyfugu]

Since the Hasegawa ADVs are normally quite pricey, the Italeri (=Tamiya) ADV have IMHO the better price-value ratio. There's also the Matchbox ADV, which has an individual mold. I haven't built it personally, but it is supposed to be a decent offering, too.

[Weaver]

Chris Gibson's Battle Flight has a lot to say about the decision process that led to the Tornado ADV being chosen.

Key points against the F-15 were:

1. At the time the decision had to be made (mid 1970s), many in the UK and US predicted that F-15 production would end by 1980, well before the UK could afford to start buying them. The F-16 lobby were constantly attacking the F-15 as too big and too expensive at the time, and seemed to be getting considerable traction for this view.

2. The standard F-15's unit price was quite good, but the cost of adapting it to UK requirements, with a UK-spec rear cockpit and possibly UK radar (the RAF were dubious of the US radar's ECCM capabilities), and refuelling probe would have pushed it up into Tornado ADV territory very quickly.

3. The F-15's higher fuel consumption would require a 30-40% increase in the size of the supporting tanker force.

4. UK authorities became aware of a multi-front push by McDD, who had approached multiple European governments and aerospace companies with superficially attractive deals for F-15 local production. While these deals might have resulted in the relevent air forces getting good equipment at good prices in the short term, the long-term effect would be to reduce the entire European aerospace industry to a licence-production operation with no R&D or design capability of it's own, thus making Europe permanently dependent on the US. This was considered both militarily and politically unacceptable.


Regarding Tornado numbers, 165 ADVs for the RAF had been factored into the MRCA costings by this point. Cancelling them would have resulted in either the RAF having to buy more IDS than it needed, or pay £130m in cancellation costs, or accept a much higher unit price for all Tornados, or persuade the Italians and Germans to reduce their orders in proportion. The last two option would in turn carry the risk of the other nations pulling the plug on the whole program, and destroying Britain's credibility as a collaborative partner for future international programmes.


Interestingly, I came up with the idea, some years ago, of the French buying Tornados for the strike role instead of Mirage 2000N+Ds, in exchange for the Panavia partners buying Mirage 2000+4000s for their fighter roles, and I put that in the list of ideas I posted earlier. Battle Flight reveals that a similar offer was in fact made by the Frecnh in the mid-1970s, but the French aircraft in question was the Dassault ACF, which was subsequently cancelled. The offer didn't get much traction because it only concerned the French Force de Frappe (i.e. the Mirage IVs), which only amounted to about 50 aircraft, which wasn't much of a quid-pro-quo for the hundreds of fighters needed by Britain, Italy and Germany. To make my idea work, the Mirage 2000/4000 proposal would have had to come along significantly earlier, which doesn't seem impossible, given the number of dead-ends and cancelled projects the French suffered in the late '60s/early '70s. Had they cut to the chase and adopted 'big, modern delta-Mirages' as the solution instead of spending considerable time on abortive VG and conventional layouts, then they might have been able to make an attractive offer within the Tornado ADV 'decision window'.

[AS.12]

To follow-up on some earlier suggestions, digging into Flight archives for 1981 / 82 shows that BAe were targeting Greece, Spain and India in order to get Tornado unit costs down.  So those ones weren't too left-field!

Given US State Dept sentiment at the time, supplying India might have required a change of radars away from the TI units.  I think all the other avionics were US-safe.

Background: Ferranti and Elliott were originally working on the mapping and TFR but after Germany was awarded responsibility for the radar selection they promptly chose TI ( September 1971 ) and that was that.  But it was fairly naive because that immediately jeopardised exports to India, Pakistan and all of South America.

[PR19_Kit]

The Italeri ADV goes together quite nicely, but like almost all Tonka kits suffers from being horizontally split, with the almost certainty that it'll need a fair amount of PSR for sure.

The tailplane pivot bar is very fragile and for sure it'll break at some point during assembly, sad to say.

[PR19_Kit]

A contact of mine at Marham says that 9 Squadron disband on March 14th at 1230 pm.

[Dizzyfugu]

The Italeri ADV goes together quite nicely, but like almost all Tonka kits suffers from being horizontally split, with the almost certainty that it'll need a fair amount of PSR for sure.

The tailplane pivot bar is very fragile and for sure it'll break at some point during assembly, sad to say.

Agree with everything.

[Lord_Voyager]

So I managed to pick up this pretty girl at my local hobby shop... I'm wondering if anyone can illuminate as to the original maker? It's not Revell...

https://www.scalemates.com/kits/revell-04617-tornado-ecr-tigermeet--103222#

[Gondor]

A contact of mine at Marham says that 9 Squadron disband on March 14th at 1230 pm.

That wouldn't happen to be one of the best ATC's in the RAF would it? 

Gondor

[PR19_Kit]

A contact of mine at Marham says that 9 Squadron disband on March 14th at 1230 pm.

That wouldn't happen to be one of the best ATC's in the RAF would it? 

Actually no, but she probably knows anyway. 

[Weaver]

Coincidentally, this Youtube video popped up on my home page. It's a documentary from 1978 about Canada's quest for a new fighter aircraft, and it mentions the Tornado as one contender: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTk-Z0Th_SA

[AeroplaneDriver]

I am going to be seriously disappointed if nobody produces a Canadian Tornado for this TB!