(Image: Andy Purbrick via Fighter Control)
The Panavia Tornado F2, the interim version of the Tornado Air Defence Variant (ADV), was plagued with problems when it entered RAF service in the 1980s. Eighteen such machines were built, notoriously delivered with concrete ballast in their noses due to serious problems with the development of their Foxhunter radar systems.
As such, the F2 interceptor garnered the unflattering nickname Blue Circle Airline after a British cement company of the same name. Foxhunter, of course, was eventually delivered, but that and other design changes meant the RAF’s Tornado F2 was short-lived. Once delivery of 165 updated F3 variants was underway, the F2s were retired to long-term storage at RAF St Athan in Wales.
Over the years a handful served as ground trainers since their commonality of parts made them useful teaching aids for engineers working on operational Tornado F3s and GR1/GR4 jets. Others, meanwhile, were used to rebuild badly damaged F3s.
But even the Tornado F3 was never seen as a true replacement to the RAF’s earlier generation of fighter aircraft, the F-4 Phantom and English Electric Lightning. And as a result, when the F3 was phased out in 2011, few were earmarked for preservation and only a handful survive today.
(Image: Steven Gray)
Combine that with their spare parts yield (through the RTP process) in a bid to keep ageing GR4s flying until around 2018, and the fate of most F3 airframes was sealed.
Interestingly, though, a couple of Tornado F2s have managed to hang on intact (while others survive as cockpit sections), one of which flew with QinetiQ at MOD Boscombe Down until 2011. Now in storage, it’s hoped this rare airframe will ultimately be saved.
The other – serial number ZA267 – is one of several ADV prototypes that were built ahead of the infamous ‘Blue Circle’ fleet. ZA267 first flew on July 18, 1980 and was grounded permanently on December 15, 1998. Given the maintenance serial 9284M, the aircraft (top) has served with the Tornado Maintenance School at RAF Marham in recent years.
The school runs over 40 different courses ranging from one to fourteen weeks and incorporates a variety of training aids and rigs allowing engineers to get aquainted with Tornado’s systems. Its website describes ZA267 as: “The Ground Instructional Aircraft (GIA), which is a hybrid Tornado F2/F3 with fully functional electrical power and hydraulics systems available for practical demonstrations.”
(Image: Koalorka, public domain)
It seems likely that ZA267 will remain in this role until the Tornado GR4 is finally retired from in the next few years pending the arrival of the F-35. But with the availability of newly grounded GR4 jets, there’s always the chance the Tornado F2 prototype may be sidelined to make way for a more standard version (and there does appear to have been some confusion over its whereabouts).
Another ADV prototype, ZA254, was sold to GD Metals in 2004. According to the MOD, the aircraft is assumed to have been scrapped on site at RAF Coningsby that summer. This makes ZA267 even more rare, as the only surviving ADV prototype and one of only two intact Tornado F2 interceptors.
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