Panavia Tornado GR.1, No. XV Squadron, Tornado Det., RAF Muharraq, Bahrain, Winter 1991

Operation Granby was the name given to the British military operations during the 1991 Gulf War. Within forty-eight hours of the invasion of Kuwait on 2 August 1990, 12 Panavia Tornado F3 interceptors had arrived in Saudi Arabia, alongside aircraft of the USAF. Soon after they were joined by SEPECAT Jaguar aircraft from RAF Coltishall and Tornado GR1s, redeployed from service in Germany.

The first RAF Tornados arrived at Muharraq, Bahrain on 29 August 1990. The detachment comprised approximately 24 crews and 15 aircraft, drawn from various squadrons and bases. Operations commenced on the night of 16/17 January 1991, initially with JP 233 anti-runway weapons and then with conventional free-fall bombs. Lazy and ignorant press reporting of the time indicated that most of the RAF Tornados were shot down during delivery of the JP 233, whereas in fact none of the losses occurred during the attack phase of a JP 233 mission. Laser guided bombing was introduced at Muharraq on 2 February using Buccaneer designators. Over 1500 bombing sorties and 100 JP 233 sorties were flown by RAF Tornados during the Gulf War. During early part of the war RAF Tornados suffered from teething reliability problems, which become a proverbial "Mission planed as four-ship formation, flown in three-ship, came back as two-ship formation"

Commission for  bering and  lupinemoonfeather, With their Tornado GR.1, preparing for another daylight toss bombing sortie with two 1,000lb iron bombs. Tornado's large slab sided nose made a very nice canvas to work on, and both crew are fortunate to have creative crew chiefs. it is a norm for RAF combat aircraft during the Gulf war to have elaborate nose arts, Tornados themselves almost always had sharkmouth painted on the nose, painting of a lady, sortie (and sometimes AA kills) marks, and the name of the aircraft, usualy using its tail codes as initials e.g. E for Emma, N for Nikki, FK for Foxy Killer etc. One curious example even had DHL logo painted on the nose. Tornado on the background itself is ZD471 E "Emma" one of few Tornados painted with "snoopy airways" nose art, another one being ZD892 H "Helen"

Nose art on this particular Tornado is quite elaborate and keeps quite lot of trivias