This Date in Aviation History: August 14 - August 16

"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn) 08/16/2019 at 12:35 • Filed to: wingspan, Planelopnik, TDIAH

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Welcome to This Date in Aviation History , getting of you caught up on milestones, important historical events and people in aviation from August 14 through August 16.

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An RAF Tornado over Iraq in 2014. (Cpl Neil Bryden, Royal Air Force)

August 14, 1974 – The first flight of the Panavia Tornado. Throughout the history military aircraft, various schools of thought have arisen on how best to employ warplanes. In WWI, aircraft started out purely as observation planes, but then evolved into dedicated fighter aircraft. By WWII, there remained dedicated fighters, but also purpose-built !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! aircraft, !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . These basic categories continued into the jet age, but by the 1960s designers began to investigate the concept of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! fighter—one plane that could do the job of several different aircraft and thus eliminate the need to develop and maintain multiple types for specific tasks. At the same time, designers in the United Kingdom began investigating the benefits of a variable geometry fighter aircraft, one that could sweep the wings out for lower speed flight or sweep them back for high speed flight.

Several European allies were working towards the same goal of a new multirole fighter, and it soon became apparent that working together would be more efficient than working individually. In 1960, four nations—the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands—agreed to form a multinational company called !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! to work together on the development of a Multirole Combat Aircraft (MRCA) capable of carrying out tactical strike missions, reconnaissance, air defense, and maritime patrol/attack. Britain was hoping to replace the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! bomber and the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! attack aircraft, while West Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy and Canada were looking for a replacement for the problematic !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! interceptor and ground attacker. Eventually the consortium decided on the Panavia 200, a swing-wing aircraft that would be developed into the Tornado.

An RAF Tornado GR4 of 15 Squadron armed with laser guided bombs (SAC Scott Ferguson, UK Ministry of Defence)

The resulting design featured wings that swept between 25 and 67 degrees with hard points under the wings that swiveled as the wing swept. Power for the Tornado comes from a pair of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! afterburning (reheating) turbofans which provide a top speed of Mach 2.2. The Tornado is armed with a single 27 mm !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! cannon and has the ability to carry 19,800 pounds of external ordnance as well as up to four nuclear bombs. A tandem cockpit with pilot in front and navigator/weapons officer in the rear was included to reduce pilot workload.

A US Air Force F-15C Eagle from Bitburg Air Base leads a Luftwaffe and an RAF Tornado during a fly past in 1987 (US Air Force)

The flight of the first prototype took place in West Germany in 1974, and the Tornado entered service first with the Luftwaffe in July 1979 followed by other partner nations. The Tornado eventually formed the backbone of the aerial attack and defense air forces of Britain, Germany, Italy and Saudi Arabia. German Tornados took part in the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the first combat operations by the Luftwaffe since WWII. British and Italian Tornados saw action as part of the NATO force in !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and the RAF flew scores of missions with the Tornado during the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , eventually being complemented by older !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! which were used as target definition aircraft. A total of 992 Tornados of all variants were built by the time production ended in 1998. The type was retired from active RAF service in April 2019, though they will continue to be flown for training purposes, while German, Italian and Saudi Arabian Tornados remain in limited service.

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August 15, 1934 – The death of Wiley Post. The 20-year period between the World Wars, roughly 1919 to 1939, is widely considered the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Technological advances in aircraft construction saw the fabric-covered biplanes give way to all-metal monoplanes, and flamboyant barnstormers crisscrossed the United States, kindling a fascination with flying among the public. As more and more civilian pilots took to the skies, aviation ceased to be an entirely military affair, and larger-than-life characters began pushing the boundaries of flight as they strove to set records in altitude, speed and distance while also helping to advance aviation technology. One of the greatest characters to come out of the era was Wiley Post.

Post was born in Van Zandt County, Texas and first became fascinated in aviation at the age of 14 when he saw his first airplane at a county fair. With the outbreak of WWI, Post enlisted in the US Army Air Service, but the war ended before he could finish his training, and he returned to work in the oilfields of Oklahoma. At the age of 26, Post finally made it into the air, not as a pilot, but as a daredevil parachutist for a traveling flying circus. When Post lost his left eye in an oilfield accident, he used the money from the accident settlement to purchase his first airplane, and he became the personal pilot of a wealthy Oklahoma oilman who purchased a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and named it Winnie Mae after his daughter. This began a lifelong association of the Vega and and Post, and he put his first mark in the record books with a victory in the National Air Race Derby from Los Angeles to Chicago, completing the flight in just over nine hours. But still greater fame lay ahead.

Wiley Post and Harold Gatty photographed at Berlin-Tempelhof Airport before continuing on to Moscow on their round-the-world flight (Deutsches Bundesarchiv)

On June 23, 1931, still piloting Winnie Mae , Post and his co-pilot !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! set out from Roosevelt Field in New York for a flight around the world. Their route took them to the Canadian Maritimes, then over the British Isles and Europe, across Russia, then on to Alaska and across Canada before landing back in New York. The flight covered 15,474 miles and took Post and Gatty just 8 days, 15 hours, and 51 minutes, slashing more than 12 days off the previous record set by the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!!   (LZ 127) in 1929. The pair returned to a ticker-tape parade and lunch at the White House with President !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . But records in the Golden Age rarely stood for long, and Post broke his own circumnavigation record three years later, this time flying solo. After three years spent upgrading the Winnie Mae with an autopilot and radio direction finder, Post took off from Floyd Bennett Field in New York on July 15, 1933 and flew roughly the same route as before. When he landed back at Bennet, Post had broken the record he set with Gatty and finished the flight just 7 days, 18 hours, 49 minutes. In an era where feats of aviation still garnered the attention of the world, a crowd of 50,000 thronged the airfield on his return.

Post dons his homemade pressure suit prior to one of his high-altitude flights. (Smithsonian)

But Post was not just a record breaker. Building on the success of his round-the-world flights, he began to investigate long-distance flight at what was considered an extreme altitude for the day. With backing from the Philips Petroleum Company and the B.F. Goodrich Company, Post developed a pressure suit that allowed him to fly in the frigid and thin air at 50,000 feet. In the process, Post also discovered the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , a high-altitude, high-speed current of air that today helps speed jet airliners on routes across the country.

Will Rogers and Wiley Post photographed a short time before their fatal crash (Author unknown)

For such a giant of the Golden Age of flight, it would seem fitting somehow for Post to die in a blaze of glory, trying to break yet another record. However, his death on August 15, 1935 was anything but glorious. Since the early days of Post’s flying career, he had been close friends with American author and humorist !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and they often traveled together, with Post flying while Rogers worked at his typewriter. During a flight from Fairbanks to Point Barrow, Alaska in an experimental aircraft cobbled together from parts scavenged from a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , Post became lost and and landed to ask for directions. Taking off again, the aircraft suffered engine failure and crashed into Walapka Lagoon, killing both men. Post was just 36 years old. During his lifetime, Post was awarded the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in 1932, the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in 1934, and was posthumously inducted into the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in 1969. The Winnie Mae is on display at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum in Washington, DC.

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(US Air Force)

August 16, 1948 – The first flight of the Northrop F-89 Scorpion. When fighter aircraft first flew in WWI, and throughout much of WWII, they were limited to daylight operations in good weather. Rain or fog made most missions impossible or, at the least, very dangerous, and it wasn’t until the introduction of airborne radar sets that warplanes could fight effectively at night. But following WWII, the continued use of high-flying strategic bombers, and later ones that could carry nuclear weapons, called for a new type of interceptor, one that could fly day or night, and in all weather conditions.

An early F-89A Scorpion of the 126th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron. (US Air Force)

The Northrop F-89 Scorpion was the US Air Force’s first interceptor designed specifically for all-weather operations, and it traces its origins back to 1945, when the US Army Air Forces (soon to become the US Air Force in 1947) began looking for a replacement for the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! night fighter. The specification for the new interceptor called for a twin-engine aircraft that was heavily armed with six guns—four in the front and two in the rear—that would be set in flexible mounts and capable of being aimed by radar. Additionally, the interceptor would be armed with air-to-air rockets stored internally and be capable of carrying 1,000 pounds of bombs, plus external rockets, for ground attack. While the USAAF did not specify that a jet engine be used, the top speed requirement could only realistically be achieved with jet power.

An F-89H Scorpion armed with Falcon air-to-air missiles mounted on the wingtip fuel tanks. (US Air Force)

The USAAF received proposals from Bell, Consolidated-Vultee, Douglas, Goodyear, Curtiss-Wright, and four submissions from Northrop. They chose two finalists, the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and one of the Northrop designs, known as the N-24. When the Air Force ultimately selected the N-24 over the Blackhawk, it spelled the end of Curtiss-Wright as an airplane manufacturer, but Northrop’s N-24 bore little resemblance to the final F-89. The N-24 was originally designed with a swept wing, but at the behest of the Air Force Northrop adopted a thin straight wing to allow the aircraft to carry greater weapons loads while making it more stable at lower speeds. The pilot and radar operator, which were originally housed in separate cockpits, were moved together into a tandem position under a single canopy, and permanent wingtip fuel tanks were added. By this time, the Air Force also dropped the requirement for a rear gun. Production of the F-89A was approved in 1949, but development continued at a rapid pace and only 18 of the original A models were produced before the introduction of the F-89B with improved avionics.

Loaded for Bear(s): An F-89D of the South Dakota Air National Guard displays a fully-loaded wingtip rocket pod. Also worth noting is the sheer size of the Scorpion compared to the pilot. (US Air Force)

Later upgrades included the introduction of the F-89D, which added wingtip pods that carried fuel as well as 52 !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (FFAR, also known as Mighty Mouse) per wing. These missiles were intended to be fired into a formation of bombers, but in practice they were used mostly for ground attack. The F-89D also had its nose guns removed in favor of a Hughes fire control system, which signaled a shift in Air Force doctrine from guns to a greater reliance on air-to-air missiles and rockets. The F-89D was the major production model of the Scorpion, and 682 out of a total of 1,050 of all variants were built to these specifications. The final derivative, the F-89J, was first aircraft capable of carrying a pair of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! nuclear rockets which, like the FFARs, would have been used to destroy bombers by detonating the nuclear warhead in the middle of the formation. The Scorpion entered service in 1951, and it served with the Air Defense Command until 1959. After its removal from frontline service, the Scorpion served the Air National Guard until its retirement in 1969.

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Short Takeoff

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(US Coast Guard)

August 14, 1958 – The first flight of the Grumman Gulfstream I. Grumman’s work on the development of a turboprop-powerd executive transport began with discussions about converting either the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! or !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! for transport duties. Grumman eventually settled on an entirely new design which became the Gulfstream which featured a low cantilever wing monoplane powered by two !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! turboprops. Depending on the configuration, the Gulfstream can accommodate 10-24 passengers and it became a popular commuter airliner. It was also adopted by the US military as the C-4, and a modified version known as the TC-4C was used for navigator training. A handful remain in operation today, mostly with charter airline Phoenix Air. A total of 200 were built from 1959-1969.

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Ukrainian government)

August 14, 1933 – The first flight of the Tupolev ANT-14, the first all-metal aircraft produced in Russia and the flagship of the Soviet propaganda squadron. The ANT-14 was an enlarged version of the three-engined !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and was powered by five !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!!   !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , two on each wing and one in the nose. Capable of carrying 36 passengers, the ANT-14 never entered production, as there was no need at the time for such a large passenger aircraft. Consequently, it was named Pravda ( Truth ) and carried out sightseeing flights over the Russian capital of Moscow and transported over 40,000 passengers before it was retired in 1941.

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(US Navy)

August 15, 2006 – The first flight of the Boeing EA-18G Growler, a carrier-based electronic warfare aircraft developed from the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! as a replacement for the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Development of the Growler began with an F/A-18F two-seat Super Hornet fitted with the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! electronic warfare system. Following the success of that aircraft, the US Navy ordered the EA-18G into production in October 2004. The Growler is capable of flying in concert with F/A-18 attack aircraft in all phases of combat missions while providing both electronic suppression of enemy radar and the ability to destroy enemy radar sites with radar-guided missiles. The Growler entered service in 2008, and currently serves with the US Navy and Royal Australian Air Force.

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(Author unknown)

August 15, 1944 – The first aerial victory is scored by a jet-powered fighter. Development of the turbojet engine began separately in Germany and Great Britain before WWII, but it was the German Luftwaffe who fielded the first operational jet fighter with the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ( Swallow ). The first missions of the 262 took place in April 1944, and they were flown primarily against large formations of American bombers carrying out daylight bombing raids. As a member of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the world’s first operational all-jet squadron, Feldwebel Helmut Lennartz shot down a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , one of a total of eight victories he scored flying the Me 262. By war’s end, Schwalbe pilots had claimed a total of 542 victories against Allied aircraft.

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(US Air Force)

August 15, 1935 – The first flight of the Seversky P-35, an all-metal monoplane fighter designed for the US Army Air Corps by !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , who later designed the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! after Seversky became !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . The P-35 was initially armed with one .30 caliber and one .50 caliber machine gun, with thirty 10-pound bombs carried on under-wing hardpoints. Following the outbreak of WWII, the P-35 was upgraded to the P-35A with a more powerful !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! engine and standardized armament, but its semi-retractable landing gear hampered its performance against more modern designs, particularly the latest Japanese fighters, and it was quickly retired. Just under 200 were built.

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August 16, 1987 – The crash of Northwest Airlines Flight 255. Northwest 255 was scheduled !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (N312RC) service that originated in Minneapolis, Minnesota with stops at Detroit Metropolitan Airport and Phoenix Sky Harbor before terminating at John Wayne Airport in California. On departure from Detroit, the airliner failed to gain altitude on takeoff and crashed onto a roadway roughly 3,000 feet from the end of the runway. Of the 155 passengers and crew, only one passenger survived, four-year-old Cecelia Cichan. Though a plan had been filed for the flight to depart from one of the airport’s longer runways, it was instead directed to the shortest runway, and analysis of the cockpit voice recorder discovered that the flight crew had failed to go through the taxi checklist and had neglected to extend the flaps and slats for takeoff. The alarm that would have alerted them to an incorrect takeoff configuration failed to sound due to an undetermined electrical fault. At the time, it was the second deadliest aircraft accident in the US, and the worst involving an MD-82 until !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in 2005.

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August 16, 1984 – The first flight of the ATR 42, a twin-turboprop regional airliner developed through a partnership between between France and Italy known as Avions de transport regional and Aerei da Transport Regionale ( !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ), both of which translate as Regional Air Transport. The ATR 42 It is powered by two !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , PW121 or PW127 engines depending on the variant, and can accommodate 40-52 passengers. It also served as the basis for the enlarged !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , which first flew in 1988. The turboprop airliner entered service with Air Littoral of France in 1985As of 2014. Nearly 500 have been built to date, and the airliner remains in production.

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August 16, 1980 – The first flight of the Embraer EMB 312 Tucano. In an effort to reduce dependence on foreign aircraft, the Brazilian government established Empresa Brasileira de Aeronáutica ( !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ) in 1969. In 1977, work began on a two-seat aircraft powered by a turboprop engine for both pilot training and counterinsurgency (COIN) missions. The 312 was the first purpose-built turboprop to have jet flight characteristics, and its raised rear seat provides unobstructed views for the rear seat pilot or instructor pilot. The 312 features ejection seats for both crew members, and combined throttle and torque controls to mimic jet fighter flight. The Tucano was widely exported, and a total of 624 were produced from 1980-1996.

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August 16, 1965 – The crash of United Airlines Flight 389, regularly scheduled !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! service from New York City to Chicago. The aircraft, a 727-22 (N7036U), had only been in service with United for two and a half months before the crash, and had completed only 138 landing and takeoff cycles. The aircraft was descending from 35,000 feet to 6,000 feet on approach to O’Hare Airport when, for unknown reasons, the pilots failed to level off and flew into Lake Michigan. Weather was not a factor, and the aircraft was functioning properly. The official !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! was unable to determine the exact reason for the crash, though some have surmised that the pilots may have misread their 3-point altimeter by 10,000 feet. The crash killed all 30 passengers and crew on board, and was the first loss of a 727.

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(US Air Force)

August 16, 1960 – US Air Force captain Joseph Kittinger sets a world record for the highest parachute jump and longest freefall. In order to test a parachute system for pilots operating from high altitudes, the US Air Force initiated !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in 1958. During the program, Captain !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! made three jumps from a stratospheric balloon, each from a higher altitude. The third jump was taken from an altitude of 102,800 feet, breaking a previous record set by Major !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! during !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in 1957. Wearing a pressure suit, Kittinger fell 85,400 feet before deploying a small stabilizer parachute, setting another record for the longest freefall of 4 minutes 36 seconds. Kittinger’s record stood until 2012, when !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! leapt from 128,000 feet, a record that stood for just two years before it was broken by !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , who jumped from 135,890 feet in 2014.

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August 16, 1952 – The first flight of the Bristol Britannia, a medium- to long-range airliner built in response to requirements set forth by the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! to develop civilian air transport in postwar England. The Britannia was originally designed to be powered by !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! radial engines, since early turboprops were still relatively unreliable. During development, Bristol instead opted for !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! turboprops, which proved troublesome and delayed the Britannia’s entry into service. Once the engine problems were solved, however, the Britannia arrived at the dawn of the jet airliner age, and only 85 copies of the turboprop airliner were built before production ended in 1960. Still, the Britannia, which came to be known as “The Whispering Giant,” proved popular for its quiet operation (at least on the outside of the cabin), and the design was subsequently sold to Canadair who developed it into the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and the CP-107 Argus maritime patrol aircraft.

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August 16, 1947 – The first flight of the de Havilland Canada DHC-2 Beaver, a high-wing monoplane developed specifically for !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (STOL) performance and used around the world as a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . During the design phase, DHC sought input from famed bush pilot !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and others, all of whom requested an aircraft with a huge amount of power and STOL capability. Full-sized doors were fitted on either side of the aircraft for ease of loading and unloading, and are large enough to fit an international standard drum (45 Imperial gallons, 55 US gallons). Pratt & Whitney Canada supplied surplus !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! engines that provided all the power the pilots requested and more. Initial sales were slow, but improved significantly when the US Army purchased hundreds of Beavers as the U-6A. A total of 1,657 were built, and many remain flying, though parts are becoming difficult to find for the WWII-era engines, leading some to upgrade the old airframe with more modern engines or even turboprop engines.

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Connecting Flights

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If you enjoy these Aviation History posts, please let me know in the comments. And if you missed any of the past articles, you can find them all at !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . You can also find more stories about aviation, aviators and airplane oddities at !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .

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For Sweden > ttyymmnn 08/16/2019 at 12:47

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I know someone who worked on the Northwest Flight 255 investigation. For a gruesome business, that case was particularly gruesome.

phenotyp > ttyymmnn 08/16/2019 at 12:50

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KingT- 60% of the time, it works every time > ttyymmnn 08/16/2019 at 12:53

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Love the Tornado, especially in Desert Storm color scheme

MarquetteLa > ttyymmnn 08/16/2019 at 13:14

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Wow, the Tucano is a beautiful plane. Seems like it’d make for a really fun civilian aircraft.

ttyymmnn > For Sweden 08/16/2019 at 13:54

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I’ve also heard some gruesome descriptions of the Germanwings crash. If you are so inclined, there are photos on the Internet. It’s as awful as you might imagine. IIRC, the girl who survived NW255 ended up in an overhead luggage bin.

ttyymmnn > phenotyp 08/16/2019 at 13:55

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I watched Baumgartner’s jump live. It was amazing. Plus, having Kittinger there was an added bonus.

For Sweden > ttyymmnn 08/16/2019 at 13:55

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Nah I don’t need to see those again :(

ttyymmnn > KingT- 60% of the time, it works every time 08/16/2019 at 13:55

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I didn’t see my first Tornado up close until the USAF museum in Dayton. 

ttyymmnn > MarquetteLa 08/16/2019 at 13:57

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It is. Very graceful, very powerful. I talked to a USAF pilot who flies T-6 Texan II (well, all fighter pilots do at some point). The aircraft has jet-like performance, and the pilots aren’t taught anything about prop flying. The computer takes care of all of that. They just get in and fly as if it were a jet.

user314 > ttyymmnn 08/16/2019 at 14:01

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By war’s end, Schwalbe pilots had claimed a total of 542 victories against Allied aircraft.

For as much as I read about WWII, things like that really bring home the full scale of the conflict. Over about a year, 1400 Me 2 62s shot down 542 Allied aircraft, but that wasn’t enough to affect the war’s outcome. I’m pretty sure there have been fewer total planes lost in air-to-air action in every war s ince Korea (depends on who’s numbers you use).

Battle of Palmdale  - 208 rockets expended, 0 hits. 

Svend > ttyymmnn 08/16/2019 at 14:25

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Erm!!!!

A US Air Force F-15C Eagle from Bitburg Air Base leads a pair of German Luftwaffe Tornados during a fly past over Germany (US Air Force)

Pretty sure the top Tornado is a GR1 from R.A.F. 14 Squadron (motto, ‘I spread my wings and keep my promise’).

14 Squadron changed from Sepecat Jaguar GR1 to Tornado GR1s and GR1As in October 1985 .

http://www.airpulford.com/tornado_gr-1_zd710#Previous

Built in 1983, ZD710 (c/n 326) had its first engine run on 19th January 1984, the first flight taking place on 9th February. Its four flight tests were complete by 21st February and it was delivered to the RAF on 4th April 1984. ZD710 spent alot of its time at RAF Bruggen, Germany with 14 & 31 Squadron’s and was flown by the well known pilot and author Tony Paxton. It was capable of carrying the WE-177 nuclear weapon making it a first-strike aircraft.

After having displayed the aircraft earlier that week, on 14th September 1989 the pilot, W/Cdr. Wright and navigator, S/Ldr. Lawton took off from RAF Abingdon, Oxfordshire in ZD710 ‘BJ’. According to the crash report the aircraft “entered a large flock of birds resulting in catastrophic failure of the port engine and significant damage to the starboard engine”. Even though the pilot had full power on at least one engine the aircraft lost height, both the pilot and the navigator then ejected at 120ft agl before the aircraft hit the ground near Drayton, Oxfordshire. It was destroyed and, subsequently, written off.

ZD710 crash site. 14th September 1989.

ttyymmnn > Svend 08/16/2019 at 14:36

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Those responsible have been sacked.

Thanks. I’ll fix it. 

KingT- 60% of the time, it works every time > ttyymmnn 08/16/2019 at 17:39

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Yup. Same.

So glad they have one.