Originally Posted by
Vendee
The RB199 certainly came a long way. I remember my first engine bay tour at Honnington in the late 80's when the mean time between removals was just 176 hours. The classic "VIB" caption followed by the boroscope inspection that confirmed that half of one of the HPT blades was missing. Still, after the introduction of single crystal HPT blades, the engines were doing 400 hours between removal. When I returned to the Tornado as a civvy in 2008, I was pleasantly surprised to find some engines were lasting 1000 hours. On the squadron, our biggest problem was during GW1 when the oil consumption for those long hot flights was marginal.
I do hope they manage to sort out a farewell flypast for the Tornado. Yes, I know the Lightning, Vulcan etc were iconic and who doesn't love them but I reckon that the Tonka has been our most utilised strike aircraft in combat situations since WW2
The initial equiax HPT blades were always going to be the weak spot. The turbine temperatures were way above the melting point of the material and the cooling holes so small. That was why the modular design was to give quick access to the HPT.
As you say the single crystal fixed that brilliantly. The very long flights pushed the oil system to its limits. It was a fantastic achievement to get engines installed for over 1000 hours.
It is still a surprisingly modern engine despite its age and it's thrust to weight ratio is still outstanding.
Tornado has been a terrific workhorse for nearly 40 years and arguably the most significant RAF fast jet having been in service for almost 40% of the life of the RAF.
Happy days eh.