The small group of enthusiasts and photographers who had braved the winter weather and gathered on the slopes of the Lake District-s iconic valleys on Wednesday, 9 January 2019, were witnesses to the end of an era. The RAF Tornado GR.4 that raced past them, in some cases at a lower altitude than the onlookers, made the last ever low-level flight by this aircraft in the United Kingdom Low Flying System. Never again would the -Mighty Fin-, an aircraft that had been a familiar sight among the valleys of the UK for around forty years, provide such a spectacle. First flown in August 1974, the Tornado arguably become of the RAF-s most important aircraft of the Cold War. Indeed, the Tornado was the mainstay of RAF strike aircraft, from its early days as a nuclear capable low-level interdiction strike fighter (the GR.1 in RAF service), through to its retirement as a more versatile medium to high-level strike fighter, the GR.4\. Along with the shorter-lived Air Defence Variant, the F.2/F.3, the
