Tornado IDS

Panavia Tornado was the jet fighter designed by United Kingdom, Italy and Federal Republic of Germany.

The history of this plane is complicated. Between the 50. and 60. Britain coped with dramatic costs cutting. Because of that, Britain could not deliver a new generation jet fighter to replace aging Canberra bombers and American heroes of Vietnam War, the F-4 Phantom. Looking for allies, they joined forces with France in 1966, but soon the France lost the interest in this bussines. So the British turned toward the companies that were ravaging their soldiers and lands during two World Wars: Messerschmitt-Boelkow-Blohm Co. in Federal Republic of Germany, Fiat in Italy and Fokker in the Netherlands. In 1969 these companies created the Panavia Aircraft Gmbh.
The company decided to build two versions of the aircraft: single seat for Bundeswehr's Luftwaffe, Italian and Netherland's AF, and two-seat for RAF and Marineflieger (Germany's naval air force). The first flight occured on August 14th 1974. Germany recieved 324 planes, RAF 200, Italy 100.
For the first time Tornados were used during Operation Desert Storm, executing the most dangerous tasks and destroying targets at faraway enemy's territory. Due to the Iraq's anti-aircraft fire 6 Tornados were lost.
However due to the short production and high exploatation costs the Tornados that are within RAF's and Luftwaffe's units are to be replaced with Eurofighter Typhoon.

Tornado IDS is a ground-attack version; the tri-letter short stands for "Interdictor/Strike". Interdictor is a kind of aircraft that operates far behind enemy's lines, making use of its range, speed and sometimes stealth capability. Tornado IDS isn't built for stealth, but is fast (max 2,418 km/h) and has a long range (1,390 km). It was to be used against Warsaw Pact countries (i.e. People's Republic of Poland or Eastern Germany), like the Su-22 against NATO countries, carrying nuclear weapons over the enemy's territory. You can imagine the suffering of German pilots who would have to bomb their own country, especialy of they had family or friends behind the western board...
Also the Poland would suffer enormous damage, since the NATO wanted to stop the USSR's offensive at Vistula's river. Cities like Warsaw or Cracov would cease to exist, the nuclear strike would turn centuries-old monuments, buldings and other historical constructions into radioactive dust. Fortunatly, the Cold War remained cold.

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As I said, I felt the hunger for the Cold War fighters in 1/144. This was because I bought the F-14A, then Harrier (AV-8B+) and finaly I decided to buy Panavia Tornado. There were two versions, asault IDS and ADV (air defence variant). My fav kind of aircraft are the ground-attack ones, so I decided to take this one.

Tornado is tiny compared to F-14*, but still has the variable wings geometry. But behold - when you install the weaponry the full-swept wings becomes unaviable.
Parts are so well built that only two parts need a pre-cementing painting: cockpit (which is kinda obvious, there are decals for instruments) and engines (so you won't spoil them while painting the fuselage or vice versa). The rest can be easily painted after making the model, which is a great help for model-makers; you don't need to be afraid of leaving fingerprints on the model.

The painting was to be light grey on dark plus dark green spots, but the dark+light grey combination didn't look very well. I wish I had an airbrush, would really help me. But while the airbrush is actually within my financial reach, the air compressors are not.
The decals were made for two air meeting versions, with custom painting etc. But I prefered the combat versions, so all I used were unit markings.

Now I debate is it worth to buy F-117**, but...

* Tornado's wing area is 26,6 m2, F-14's is 52,5 m2.

Model: Revell
Scale: 1/144
Paints: Pactra plus some Humbrol's metallizer
Time: 2 days