IRON MAIDEN's BRUCE DICKINSON On Arriving In Tank At SWEDEN ROCK FESTIVAL: 'The Swedish Army Have Lent Us The Ultimate Uber'

IRON MAIDEN has shared official video of the band's singer Bruce Dickinson arriving in a tank before the band's headlining performance Thursday night (June 4) at the Sweden Rock Festival, which is being held in Sölvesborg, Sweden. In the clip, which can be seen below, Bruce can be seen beaming as he clutched the battered Union Jack flag he uses for MAIDEN's "The Trooper" performance, as well as a Swedish flag.

Commenting on how he ended up riding in a tank ahead of MAIDEN's concert at Sweden Rock Festival, Bruce said: "I'm not gonna even go into bore you with the gory details of how I ended up in a pub saying, 'Really? You mean we could actually go in a tank?' And voila. The Swedish army have lent us the ultimate Uber. On we go."

During his February 2022 spoken-word show at Uptown Theater in Kansas City, Missouri, Dickinson recalled how he personally flew Royal Air Force pilots home from Afghanistan to RAF Wittering in 2008, taking control of a Boeing 747 chartered by the Ministry of Defence to transport RAF pilots back to the U.K. He said: "One of the jobs that we had at the airline I worked for, we had an airplane permanently allocated to the military to go and take people places — not to wars, but we'd take them to bases. And sometimes we flew people back. And sometimes we flew people back who had been in Afghanistan, for example, been in a war. They would go somewhere for two or three weeks to try and readjust and then we'd take them back. And one particular flight, we were the flying the Royal Air Force Regiment, which is RAF boots on the ground, soldiers. And they'd been to Afghanistan. It was an unusual flight 'cause we were returning them to their actual home base — not to a military airfield and then they get on a coach and they go back to their barracks. Where they were based had a runway, and we were told to go direct there. They had taken some casualties and they had lost some people. But they were all really cheerful; the best passengers you could ever have in the military — I mean, seriously… And we flew them into a place called the RAF Wittering, which is where they invented the Harrier Jump Jet. So, as we were coming in to land, we stopped and we blew the reverse thrust. And I had a female co-pilot, first officer. And we were looking out, and all really close to the runway were families, kids, all the families and wives and everybody of all the soldiers, and they were all [holding signs saying], 'You're my hero, daddy' and everything else. I mean, it was very emotional. And we actually had to stop the airplane 'cause my co-pilot was welling up and so was I. We were both trying not to [cry]. I went, 'Okay, we're gonna stop. We're gonna blow our noses, make sure we can fucking see where we're going and then do the job. 'Cause this is really exceptional.' The last thing you wanna do is go, 'It was so emotional, we ended up in a fucking ditch.' So, we dropped them off and that was it. So that was one of the more memorable flights — the sort of thing we used to do."

Six years ago, Dickinson was officially attested into the Royal Air Force, the United Kingdom's aerial warfare force. The British singer was awarded the role of Honorary Group Captain.

Bruce has held a commercial pilot's license for more than 25 years.

Dickinson had other connections with the RAF, having completed an emergency landing at RAF Halton in 2015. He was flying his Fokker triplane when it began to run low on fuel.