In the Air Tonight by Michael Rondot.

A Tornado GR-1 with JP 233 airfield denial weapons taking off at the start of a night low-level mission to attack an airfield target deep within Iraq. The television images of the Gulf War air campaign as a series of precision attacks with laser-guided bombs, dropped from the relative safety of medium altitude, takes no account of the fearsome price that was paid in delivering these early low-level attacks. During the opening nights of Operation Desert Storm hundreds of RAF, US and Coalition aircraft unleashed a tidal wave of low-level bombing attacks on airfield targets in Iraq and in occupied Kuwait. Spearheading the RAF attack were Tornado GR.1 units based at Tabuk and Dhahran in Saudi Arabia and Muharraq, Bahrain. These early missions, flown at low-altitude, often under cover of darkness, were strictly for the brave. Approaching their targets over featureless desert, the aircrews were faced with ferocious barrages of AAA gunfire and missiles defending the airfields. It took a special kind of determination to press home attacks in the face of the full fury of Iraqs air defenses flying straight and level through curtains of tracer fire to deliver JP 233 weapons. Afterwards, some of the pilots were icily matter-of-fact about these missions: You could see the AAA from over twenty miles away but from five miles out at 200 feet you could steer a path through the lines of tracer to the target. It was a bit scary, but we were more concerned about being forced off track and laying down our weapons a hundred yards right or left of the intended impact path, than we were about bullets going past the window. Others were more sombre about their experiences, perhaps realising that running a gauntlet of enemy fire and surviving unscathed owed more than a little to luck and the Iraqi gunners tactics of hosing the sky with unaimed fire_x000d__x000d_

19 RAF Tornado aircrew from Operation Desert Storm, including holders of the Distinguished Service Order and Distinguished Flying Cross awards for gallantry.

Signed limited edition of 500 prints, with 19 signatures.

Paper size 28 inches x 20 inches (71cm x 51cm)