02049 Hasegawa 1/72 Panavia Tornado IDS "Italian Air Force Tornado 25TH Anniversary"

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This aircraft can be considered a symbol of the revival of the Western European aviation industry, which managed to overcome the post-war decline, American dependence, the temptation of General rocketry and financial difficulties of the sixties. Despite all the obstacles, the Europeans have created a first-class combat vehicle that meets the highest requirements for the third generation fighters. Tornado - the world's first production aircraft with fly-by-wire control system (EMCS), as well as the first European serial fighter with variable sweep wing.
the Prerequisites for the creation of a European strike aircraft began to take shape at the turn of the 1950-60-ies, when scientists, designers and military of a number of countries of the "Old world" began to study the appearance of a promising supersonic fighter-bomber with the ability to take off and land short. Similar work at the time unfolded in the United States (later they led to the appearance of the f-111).
In the second half of 1957, the British air force issued tactical and technical requirements GOR339, providing for the development to replace the fighter-bomber "hunter" double (placement of pilots in tandem) low-altitude attack aircraft with a wing of variable geometry, capable in combat conditions to use as a runway straight sections of motorways. Although the request of the air force was not supported by state funding, the leading aircraft companies of the United Kingdom, which began to gradually recover after the defeat of aviation, perpetrated in the mid-1950s by British politicians - proponents of missiles (largely under the influence of their Russian counterpart N. S. Khrushchev), began to conceptual research such machines. So, by 1960, the company "Vickers Armstrong" has worked on a number of projects of attack aircraft with variable wing geometry (studied as a machine with horizontal takeoff and VTOL).