On the night of
January 17th 1991, along with American and British aircraft streaming north into
Iraq was the Royal Saudi Air Force. Flying in RSAF Panavia IDS Tornado
"790" was pilot Lt Col Sultan Farhan Al-Milhim and Lt. Mohammed Raja.
Earlier that night, Sultan had been at home alone when he received a phone call
to return to the base. Once there he was informed their country was going
to war. Sultan and Mohammed took off with their Tornado loaded with JP233
munitions dispensers. Their mission that night was to fly across an Iraqi
airfield with other Tornados and cut the runway putting it out of service.
After take-off they climbed to the refueling track and hooked up with a RSAF
tanker. After refueling, they turned toward the Iraqi border and descended
lower and lower until they set the autopilot for 200ft and turned off the
navigation lights. Crossing the border, they realized there would be no
abort and they were truly in a war. The other Tornados radioed that they
were low on fuel and since they could not make their time-over-target they had
to abort. This left Sultan and Mohammed as the sole Tornado attacking the
airfield. At 25 miles to the target, a supporting F-4G fired a HARM at a
SAM which in turn alerted the Iraqi defense of an impending strike. Iraqi
AAA fire lit up the night sky over the airfield. Intense Iraqi AAA fire
caused many pilots that first night to feel fear and Sultan and Mohammed were no
different from other pilots flying their first combat sortie. Sultan
thought they would surely be killed, yet they continued on with their mission.
Initially, the Tornados were supposed to fly across the runway and any bombing
errors would be offset by the long string of bomblets from the JP233.
Because the rest of his flight aborted and he still had to render the runway
unusable, Sultan decided to fly down the length of the runway while the JP233
discharged its munitions. For what probably seemed like an eternity,
Sultan flew down a gauntlet of AAA fire and perfectly placed his munitions on
target. While flying away from the airfield, the Tornado shuddered and
Sultan exclaimed the aircraft had been hit. Mohammed set him straight,
telling him that was the empty JP233 dispenser being automatically jettisoned.
Mohammed then calmly asked Sultan to turn for home. After crossing the
border, Sultan put the Tornado into a series of rolls to celebrate their
gratitude of having survived and successfully accomplished their mission.
They landed King Abdullah Aziz Air Base to a heroes welcome. After that
first mission and with Sultan's advice, the RSAF stopped flying low-level
missions.
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This is the fourth
Italeri Tornado I have built so building this kit has become fairly routine.
Aftermarket sets include: Eduard photoetch, Paragon exhausts, fin correction,
bulged wheels, pylons and missile rails, slats and flaps, and the Neomega
cockpit set. Aside from the resin I used, the only kit modification I did
was to cut away some plastic on the refueling probe parts to make it more
accurate.
For the aircraft
load configuration I decided to build my Tornado loaded for a runway denial
mission. I used the Airfix kit fuel tanks and JP233 dispensers. The
AIM-9 missiles are from the Hasegawa weapons set. The Sky Shadow and
BOZ-107 ECM pods are from Xtraparts.
Painting was done
with a mixture of Model Master and Gunze Sangyo paints. Finer detail
painting was done with various enamels.
To represent
aircraft 760, I used decals from Model Alliance MA-48174 "Tornados at
War, Desert Storm 1990-91". This sheet gave me the Royal Saudi Air
Force markings and squadron crest; "760" was made from cutting a few
decals for the appropriate numbers. The majority of decals represent
general aircraft stencils which are from the Airfix Gr1 Tornado kit.
Benner
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