A ROYAL Air Force aircraft travelled hundreds of miles from a base in Scotland ahead of a photoshoot with the Prime Minister, before flying straight back.
Photos of Boris Johnson with two RAF aircraft made newspaper front pages on Friday after his visit to RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire on Thursday.
An RAF P-8A Poseidon, which Mr Johnson was pictured standing in front of, was flown a distance of more than 330 miles from its base in Lossiemouth, Moray.
The plane, a maritime patrol aircraft designed for anti-submarine warfare, departed from its base shortly before 9am on Wednesday.
It then flew back on Thursday, leaving at approximately 6.20pm, after the Prime Minister completed his visit to the base.
Having been manufactured in Seattle, the aircraft arrived in the UK in November 2021, and has flown just six times since, according to flight tracking website Flightradar24.com, including the trip to Waddington where it was pictured with the Prime Minister, and its return journey.
READ MORE: US Air Force issue apology for 'disturbance' after jets fly low over Scotland
It had never previously visited the Waddington base.
Mr Johnson was also pictured with his thumbs up sitting in an RAF fast jet, which was flown from its home base of RAF Coningsby, which is 15 miles away from RAF Waddington.
Speaking to reporters at the base, the Prime Minister said he was visiting to “talk to some of our crew, the officers who are involved in very, very important intelligence-gathering and surveillance”.
He added: “Some of the planes here today are going to be used very shortly over the border in Belarus, in Poland, and elsewhere over Ukraine, to see what’s going on and to allow us to have even finer detail evaluation of the military dispositions there.”
Both the Typhoon Mr Johnson was pictured sitting in, and the P-8A Poseidon were flown back to their respective bases after his visit.
The Ministry of Defence announced on Wednesday that four additional Typhoon jets had been deployed to Cyprus to patrol the skies over eastern Europe.
HMS Diamond, a Type 45 destroyer, is also preparing to deploy to the eastern Mediterranean alongside other Nato vessels.
The UK has also doubled the number of personnel deployed in Estonia as part of Nato’s Enhanced Forward Presence mission.
The PA news agency has approached Downing Street and the Ministry of Defence for comment.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel