Talk:Panavia Tornado

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The Panavia Tornado is a family of twin-engine multirole combat aircraft, jointly developed and manufactured by Italy, the United Kingdom and West Germany. There are three primary Tornado variants: the Tornado IDS fighter-bomber, the Tornado ECR suppression of enemy air defences aircraft and the Tornado ADV interceptor aircraft. Developed by Panavia Aircraft, it made its first flight in 1974 and entered service in 1979–80. The Tornado is used in active service by the German Air Force, the Italian Air Force, the Royal Saudi Air Force and was also used by the Royal Air Force (RAF) until 2019. This RAF Tornado GR4 was photographed in a training sortie over North West England in 2012.

Photograph credit: Mike Jones

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Country and manufacturer

It mentions that it was manufactured until 1998, but the German manufacturer that is listed is MBB, which went defunct and was merged into DASA in 1989. The article does not mention DASA. Was it (not) manufactured by them? PhotographyEdits (talk) 09:20, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

Company mergers cause headaches for editors and are generally ignored unless the new company name is a significant contributor to production. MBB became DASA which became EADS which is now Airbus. British Aerospace became BAE Systems and Aeritalia became Alenia Aeronautica and is now Leonardo S.p.A.. It's just not practical to list all the company names and even more difficult to research which company manufactured which part of the aircraft in a certain year. It could be said that all manufacturing was done under supervision of Panavia but that would miss the detail of where each major assembly was built. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 12:48, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, but the EADS was established after manufacturing stopped so that should not be mentioned anyway. Same applies to British Aerospace and Aeritalia. PhotographyEdits (talk) 12:58, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

There are editors/readers who complain that the current company name does not appear in an article, no win situation basically. You could contact Panavia directly for answers though they couldn't be used on this page. Some of the more modern publications on the Tornado might give more detail that could be used. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 13:51, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

• Also "manufacturer" can include upgrades, maintenance and support roles. But I would not suggest mapping out all the heritage manufacturers here. -Fnlayson (talk) 13:55, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

  @Fnlayson Also that is not what I am arguing for. My point is that the company names which were involved in manufacturing should be named, and if they got renamed during that period, that includes multiple names for the same company. It doesn't need to go back to early 20th century or well into the 21th century. I have added it as a footnote for DASA, should not be disruptive to the flow of the article. PhotographyEdits (talk) 14:08, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

• Sure, that's fine. We were commenting on full treatment of all the heritage companies involved. Regards -Fnlayson (talk) 14:20, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

It's misleading to claim MBB 'went defunct', which most people will read as implying bankruptcy, and slightly misleading to say that it was 'merged into DASA'. Rather it was bought-out by Daimler-Benz AG to become the core of their aerospace arm as Deutsche Aerospace SA (also incorporating the smaller MTU and Dornier), which then became DASA. 86.14.138.8 (talk) 22:13, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

Prototypes and Testing / Ted Talbot

The text claims Ted Talbot was assigned to the programme by the Ministry of Supply, which is quite surprising considering the Ministry of Supply was abolished in 1959, a decade before the MRCA programme began and 16+ years before the flight test programme could have been able to identify the problem he was supposedly assigned to deal with. Someone with access to the relevant text may want to revisit it and confirm what it actually says. 86.14.138.8 (talk) 21:49, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

This has been discussed before and similar objections raised - see Talk:Panavia_Tornado/Archive_2#Confused_additions.Nigel Ish (talk) 22:07, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

Ick, that descended into editoral squabbling and completely obfuscated the point that the article makes a claim that cannot be true, no matter what the reference claims, because the MoS ceased to exist 16 years before it supposedly sent Talbot. Mind you, it's also unclear how the MoS could 'assign' a BAC/British Aerospace employee, request he be assigned, yes, assign, no.

86.14.138.8 (talk) 22:27, 19 March 2024 (UTC)