Britain will celebrate an iconic warplane as it makes its final journey across the country - and High Wycombe residents will be able to see it in the skies tomorrow. 

With almost 40 years of Royal Air Force service coming to an end, the iconic Tornado jet is undertaking a series of finale flypasts around the UK.

For three days starting today, members of the public will be able to see a formation of the long-serving fast jets undertake a tour of the UK that will overfly most RAF bases and other key sites associated with the aircraft.

On Wednesday, the plane will start its journey from the Imperial War Museum at 1.15pm, before heading over the former RAE Bedford and Cranfield airfield before making its way to Bucks. 

It will fly over RAF Halton and then RAF High Wycombe just before 1.30pm before heading off to RAF Benson. 

Wing Commander James Heeps said: “It is a great privilege to be part of a national event that allows the public to say farewell to a brilliant aircraft that has been the cornerstone of our operations for so many years.

"It’s also a sad occasion because it will mean that from the end of next month the Tornado will never fly again.”

First entering service in 1979, the fast jets has been used in operations across the world, most recently bombarding Daesh to push the terrorist group back through Syria and Iraq.

After over four years on Operation Shader, on February 5 this year the aircraft finally returned home from operations for good.

In the immediate term, the Tornadoes will be replaced by new weapons capabilities for the Typhoon jet.

The Tornado will be officially retired from service at the end of March and will only be used for training purposes over the UK in the intervening period.

Nicknamed the "Tonka”, the aircraft’s first use in live operations was during the Gulf War in 1991, when 60 Tornado GR1s were deployed from bases in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

Two years later they were upgraded to the GR4 model, which has been used ever since over the skies of Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.