- Tri-National Tornado Training Establishment
The Tri-National Tornado Training Establishment (TTTE) was a unit based at
RAF Cottesmore inRutland ,England . It performed training on thePanavia Tornado for theRoyal Air Force ,Luftwaffe andItalian Air Force . Thememorandum of understanding establishing the unit was signed in1979 by theUnited Kingdom ,Germany andItaly and the unit came into existence on29 January 1981 . The first RAF Tornados arrived at the base on 1 July 1980; Luftwaffe Tornados arrived on 2 September 1980; and Italian Tornados arrived much later on 5 April 1982. Allocation of aircraft was Germany: 23, UK: 19, and Italy: 6. Flying training began on 5 January 1981. It was manned by personnel of all three participating nations, trained 300 crews a year when at its height and consisted of three squadrons of Tornados. All servicing was done by RAF groundcrew.In the post-
Cold War era, the three nations decided that they would be better served performing their own type training. There was also a need to find space for British aircraft returning to the UK from bases inGermany , such asRAF Bruggen , that were closing. Consequently the unit disbanded on 24 February1999 , with Tornado flying ending on 31 March 1999.While the Eurofighter project has followed the example of the Tornado programme in many ways, the TTTE model was not adopted. Rather the Eurofighter partners (Germany,
Italy ,Spain andUnited Kingdom ) have chosen to run national training schemes.External links
* [http://www.paulnann.com/location/CottesmoreRAF.htm Gallery of aircraft seen at Cottesmore.]
* [http://www.ptvideo.com/videos/Aviation/ttte.html Souvenir video.]
* [http://www.airsceneuk.org.uk/hangar/1999/ttte/ttte.htm Excellent "Air-Scene UK" article about the disbandment of the TTTE.]
* [http://www.raf.mod.uk/rafcottesmore RAF Cottesmore.]
* [http://www.thunder-and-lightnings.co.uk/spotting/cottesmore.html Aircraft spotting at Cottesmore]
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