Glad you like it!
I have a goodly number of skins painted for both the bomber and recon versions but they are inaccessible to me until my computer is rebuilt. A number of others are planned. Meanwhile all I can do is get on line via this horrible little borrowed device.
I was surprised to find so many paint jobs for the Tornado, and so many minor variants. I’d always liked the B-45 but never knew so much about it until I started researching this project.
I was a bit surprised to find that it was the first “real” jet bomber in service with any Air Force in the world. The Arado Ar.234 is usually credited with that but the Arado (which the Tornado’s designers copied openly and shamelessly in important ways,) was a single seat fighter bomber the size of a P-38 Lightning with an all-external bomb load less than a P-38 or an F4U Corsair. The B-45 was a multi-engine, multi-crew bomber the size of a B-17 with the bomb load of a Lancaster (it could carry and drop a 22,000 pound Grand Slam bomb, though I don’t think the Americans ever acquired any of them.)
A B-45 was the first jet to drop a live atomic bomb, and it was NATO’s first and for a while only nuclear bomber. As a recce bird it flew the first deep penetration recon missions over denied territory in the PRC and USSR. As part of that it became the first plane to routinely use aerial refueling on combat missions.
Such a significant airplane, yet so quickly forgotten, even while still in service. On one occasion a transient B-45 that stoped at a USAF base for fuel was greeted with a brass band, a red carpet and a phalanx of USAF brass and local civic dignitaries who thought they were welcoming the base’s first B-57. On another occasion a Tactical Air Command B-45 made an unscheduled fuel stop at a Strategic Air Command base only to have the crew arrested and detained by security police who were certain that they had captured an invading Russian bomber. They weren’t fooled by the plane’s US markings or the English speaking crew’s USAF uniforms!
RAF Sculthorpe was the main USAF Tornado base, and from where the RAF flew the first deep penetrations of the USSR. We will have both USAFE and RAF skins to fly the B-45 and RB-45 in from Ian’s Sculthorpe.
I could rattle on but this two-fingered typing is driving me crazy!
