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During the opening nights of Operation Desert Storm, hundreds of RAF, US and Coalition aircraft unleashed a tidal wave of low-level bombing attacks on airfield targets in Iraq and in occupied Kuwait. Spearheading the RAF attack were Tornado GR.I units based at Tabuk and Dhahran in Saudi Arabia and Muharraq, Bahrain. These early missions, flown at low-altitude, often under cover of darkness, were strictly for the brave. Approaching their targets over featureless desert, the aircrews were faced with ferocious barrages of AAA gunfire and missiles defending the airfields. It took a special kind of determination to press home attacks in the face of the full fury of Iraq's air defences, flying straight and level through curtains of tracer fire to deliver JP 233 weapons.
The television images of the Gulf War air campaign as a series of precision attacks with laser-guided bombs, dropped from the relative safety of medium altitude, takes no account of the fearsome price that was paid in delivering these early low-level attacks. Aircraft were lost; friends were killed or taken prisoner, but the missions continued for five nights until it became clear that the price was too high, and Tornados abandoned low-altitude attacks.
In the Air Tonight, portrays a Tornado GR.I with JP 233 airfield denial weapons taking off at the start of a night low-level mission to attack an airfield target deep within Iraq. The bad weather and dark, overcast evening sky of the first days of the war add power and atmosphere to the dramatic scene as the Tornado accelerates along the runway with afterburners blazing. As a Jaguar pilot working alongside the Tornado crews at Bahrain, Michael Rondot witnessed many scenes like this, and his painting pays tribute to those who flew the Tornado. some of whom, tragically, did not survive the war.
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