Tornado’s Final Farewell

The Tornado GR4 first entered service with the RAF in 1979 and has enjoyed a career spanning almost 40 years. Its first duty of combat was during the Gulf War in 1991 and since then it has played an important active role in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and Iraq. During the last few months of Tornado Ops I spent a fair amount of days at the base hoping to catch as many different photo ops as I could. With the retirement of such an iconic jet looming, we all hoped that Marham would paint a couple of jets in some kind of farewell markings to mark the end and thankfully our prayers were answered when IX(B) Sqn and 31 Sqn rolled out two specially painted GR4s. Rumours were circulating that there was one more specially marked GR4 to come which would be in a all over retro camo paint scheme. It turned out the rumours were correct and on the 23rd January GR4 ZG752 was revealed to the public for the first time where it took part in a photo flight of all three specially painted GR4s. On the 15th March a Tornado GR4 made its final ever flight over Marham with a series of flypasts over a disbandment parade at RAF Marham. Here are a selection of images from the last few months of GR4 operations at RAF Marham.