Tornado: In the Eye of the Storm

by John Nichol

The JP233 was not only unproven in battle; there was barely a Tornado pilot who had flown with one. A live drop had been undertaken during its early testing, and in 1988 two crews had flown with a fully armed and JP233-loaded aircraft to test the handling capabilities at the aircraft’s maximum permissible weight,15 but this very expensive and highly secret weapon was not authorised to be deployed for normal peacetime training. The restrictions were quickly lifted. Nige flew his first ever sortie with two live JP233s on 17 December to check how the war-laden Tornado coped with the weapons – a total of almost 5 tonnes – under its belly, at low level, before people began shooting at them for real. ‘In some ways, the Tornado was a fish out of water in the desert. It had been designed for the European theatre of operations to fly at low level and in a cool climate. Now we were flying it in incredible heat, which meant the engines were less efficient.’