Tornado: In the Eye of the Storm

by John Nichol

the first few hours of any Cold War conflict, the Tornado’s role would be to prevent the enemy from using their airfields, and the unique JP233 ‘runway denial munition’ was specifically designed to meet its profile for fast, below-the-radar attack. Developed during the 1970s, the JP233 was designed to render the Soviet runways built in East Germany or Poland unusable for critical operations with a barrage of cratering weapons and anti-personnel devices.26 Each JP233 contained thirty runway-cratering munitions weighing 57lb, designed to penetrate the surface of a runway before then exploding and causing massive ‘heave distortion’ to the surface area. The blast would force the tarmac upwards in a great spew of broken rubble. To discourage anyone seeking to make repairs, a further 215 anti-personnel bomblets followed on small parachutes, designed to pop up on three legs and arm themselves, detonating if disturbed. A final kicker was that a number of the munitions would continue to detonate randomly for some hours after lying dormant. It was a vicious weapon. A Tornado could carry two of the 2.5-tonne JP233s, so a single raid by eight jets brought the potent mix of 480 cratering bombs and 3,440 anti-personnel bomblets. It was a brutal and effective method of airfield operating surface denial, with one ‘slight’ drawback. The scientists who developed it required the Tornado to fly straight and level down the runway, at around 200ft and 520mph, which, the aircrews observed stoica...