http://www.airforcesmonthly.com TORNADO TRIBUTE // 53Shortly after Kuwait was invaded, British
Aerospace also completed development testing
of the new Air-Launched Anti-Radiation
Missile (ALARM) at Naval Air Weapons
Station China Lake, California, ready for No IX
(Bomber) Squadron to adopt the suppression
of enemy air defences (SEAD) role. However,
amid the deployments to the Gulf, No 20
Squadron initially spun up to adopt this role
ready to tackle Saddam’s air defence network.
Air Commodore (ret’d) Mark Roberts, a
Flight Lieutenant Junior Pilot on No 16
Squadron at RAF Laarbruch, Germany, back
in 1990, recalls: “I’d done a couple of years
on ‘15’ [No XV Squadron] and moved to No
16 Squadron just before Granby started, and
we deployed to Tabuk on November 25, 1990.
“We’d done some work-up at home before
we departed; in fact, the first thing we did was
to get tanker qualified. As an RAF Germany
squadron, very few crews at the time were
tanker qualified, mainly because we were so
close to the East German border, so it was the
squadrons back in the UK who
were mainly qualified. We also
did a lot of operationallow flying [OLF] and a lot of night work.
“Tabuk was a good location to
continue our work-up. The terrain was
everything from Lawrence of Arabia-
type desert to significant mountains.
“I think the low-level flying really
prepared us well on the basis that we had
no idea what we’d be doing when it came
to operations. So, being honed for low-
level by day or night was a really good
thing for us. The value of the training made
us really sharp, which meant we could
cope with whatever was thrown at us.”
Roberts and his fellow crews at Tabuk
worked together as constituted four-
ship teams, training with everything
from the Hunting JP233 runway denial
bomblet-dispensing weapon to 1,000lb
(454kg) general-purpose bombs in low-
level lay-down and loft delivery.
“We essentially took our Cold War North
German Plain tactics and ported them to the
desert environment. There were, however,
certain things over the sand that were differentfrom operating over temperate terrain. We
didn’t have integrated night-vision goggles;
they arrived later during the war, but initially
we had a hand-held system that no-one used.
“That meant all our low flying was done
hands-off, relying on the terrain-following
radar [TFR, regularly referred to as ‘TF’].
However, the undulating sand dunes didn’t
give the TFR a very good radar return.
“The first thing you knew if it hadn’t
picked up a dune was the radar altimeter
[radalt] would go off because you were below
the minimum altitude that you’d set.”
In fact, this issue led to the RAF rotating
aircraft through a modification programme
back at their home bases. “We were very
well trained, but we were totally relying on
the kit. If it detected any failure, it pulled up
at 3-4g to get you away from the ground.”First night
Each clutching a pair of JP233s ready to
cut a swathe across the runways of Iraqi air
bases, four aircraft from the DhahranAbove: Tornado GR1 ZA492 ‘FE’ was assigned to the Tabuk wing, led by No 16 Squadron from RAF
Brüggen. The GR1s and 1A reconnaissance aircraft regularly carried the ‘Hindenburger’ drop tanks
from the Tornado F3. Ian Black Left: RAF Tornado GR1s deployed to three locations for Operation Granby:
Muharraq in Bahrain, as well as Dhahran and Tabuk in Saudi Arabia. Ian Black Below: Tornado GR1 ZA465
‘FK’ ‘Foxy Killer’ notched up 44 missions. It’s seen back in the UK post-Operation Granby. Jamie HunterAbove: The fi rst nights saw the Tornado crews fl ying risky low-level runway denial missions with two JP233
pods. The weapon dispersed bomblets across the prepared surfaces to prevent fl ying operations. Ian BlackBaptism of f ire