'We were doing about 620 miles-per-hour, 200 feet above the desert, in total darkness. Everything was running on rails as we approached the target. Then all hell broke loose. I remember the missile being fired at us; I broke left and shouted, "Chaff!" 'All I could see was a flame, like a very large firework, coming towards me. Then there was a huge white flash. I remember an enormous wind and then I was knocked unconscious. My last thoughts were that I was going to die.' The Royal Air Force's Tornado bomber was a Cold War invention, designed primarily to deliver tactical nuclear weapons onto Warsaw Pact targets in the hope of slowing a mass Soviet onslaught. We who flew her in the 1980s knew that if we ever went to war, there would be very little to come home to. Then, in 1990, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein ordered the invasion and occupation of neighbouring...

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