Fighter jet caught on camera doing ‘circuits and bumps’ over Hawarden

If you were in and around Hawarden, Deeside and Chester yesterday you may have heard a wonderfully noisy flyover by an Tonardo GR4 attack and reconnaissance aircraft.
The RAF’s workhorse in recent Middle East conflicts the GR4 was spotted from the ground and on Flightradar24 doing a couple of circuits of the north Wales Cheshire border before ‘touch and go’ landing at Hawarden Airport – a manoeuvre known as Circuits and Bumps.

Quite a regular occurrence to hear fast jets in the sky above Deeside but its a bit of a rarity to see them up close unless it is of course the Red Arrows  who fly out of Hawarden to displays regularly, @Daveb257 has outdone us all though by capturing the attack jet on camera landing and taking off from Hawarden.

Tail number ZA372 the Tornado which flew over the region is from 12 Squadron based at RAF Marham in Norfolk.

The GR4 has been in service with the RAF for more than 30 years, but a combination of major upgrade programmes and numerous continual enhancements has kept the aircraft amongst the forefront of all attack aircraft.

Still one of the very few aircraft in the world that is able to operate at low-level, day or night and in poor weather, the Tornado is now equipped with a modern precision-guided weapons suite and world-class reconnaissance sensors such as the Reconnaissance Airborne Pod for Tornado (RAPTOR).

The aircraft also carries the Litening III Advanced Targeting Pod, which is used in both attack and reconnaissance roles.

The RAF has had Tornados deployed to the Middle East region for more than 20 years.