Move to a totally Crowd Front show

Sometime late in 1997 while starting the work up for the new Season, Squadron Leader Simon Meade, the Team Leader, told us that it was his intention to introduce a totally 'crowd front' show for his final Season in 1999. This was so that the Red Arrows' show would once again conform to European directives. For some years the Red Arrows had benefited from a waiver which allowed them, and no other formation aerobatic team, to fly certain manoeuvres over and some directly towards the crowd. The British waiver had been accepted by all the countries the Team displayed in apart from France and the Netherlands. We knew that Simon had originally wanted to introduce the crowd front show for the 1998 Season but the long and tiring African and Far Eastern tours had put paid to that idea. With no major overseas tour planned for the end of the 1998 Season, Simon felt confident that he would have sufficient time to produce a crowd front show for his final season. Being able to dispense with the waiver for his final year, he also felt certain that the Team would once again be welcome to display in France and the Netherlands.

Almost from day one back in 1965, the Red Arrows had started their show by arriving directly overhead the crowd from behind. This so-called 'crowd rear' arrival was spectacular and it always surprised a large percentage of the crowd – those out of earshot of the public address system and those who had never seen the Red Arrows perform before. It also enabled the Team to demonstrate their claim to arrive on time, to the nearest couple of seconds. There are a few seaside locations where the Team commentator and the expectant crowds are down at sea level while the aircraft approach from inland over cliffs and are invisible until the instant they roar overhead. At some sites this invisibility extends to radio waves which will not bend around cliff tops and so the commentator has to rely on an accurate watch to start his opening announcement over the public address system: 'Will your please welcome the Royal Air Force Aerobatic Team, the Red Arrows.' If all is well, and it usually is, the word 'arrows' will immediately be followed by what is affectionately known as the 'whoosh' – the unmistakeable roar of nine British Aerospace Hawk jets passing close overhead.

Apart from the traditional crowd rear arrival, there were several other manoeuvres where individual aircraft flew both over and towards the crowd and it was not just the Red Arrows doing it: most of the European display teams had similar manoeuvres. But all that changed following an horrendous accident at the USAF Ramstein base in Germany on 28 August 1988 during a display by the Italian Air Force Team, Frecce Tricolori. Three aircraft collided with each other whilst performing the 'Pierced Heart', one of their more flamboyant manoeuvres which involved aircraft approaching each other from several different directions. The Red Arrows have never performed manoeuvres where more than two aircraft, or two groups of aircraft, are approaching each other on a potentially collision course. Some people may argue that the Red Arrows' 'Five-Four Split', where a group of five aircraft heads towards a group of four aircraft, violates this rule. Not so because there is only one pilot leading each group and each knows whose responsibility it is to avoid the other. The remainder of the pilots are, of course, maintaining formation on their own group leader.

Three of the Frecce's pilots were amongst the 70 dead and around 400 injured at Ramstein. Sadly the vectors of the crashing aircraft were towards the crowd and that accounted for the large number of fatalities and injuries. The Red Arrows were performing at Leicester and Cowes on that fateful day instead of being scheduled to display at Ramstein although they had displayed there on 13 occasions between 1973 and 1987. The official Red Arrows end-of-season report for 1988 commented thus on the Ramstein accident:

'This accident immediately caused national and international reverberations about display safety and the future of formation and other display flying. It was of immediate concern to the Team since Farnborough was only a week away and any proposals to forbid the over-flight of spectators would have required such a change to the display sequence as to preclude any further displays for the season. However, high level negotiations and a validation display in front of the Farnborough Safety Committee allowed the Team to display for that week and the remainder of the season within the United Kingdom without change to the sequence.'

More or less immediately after the accident the German Government banned all formation aerobatics, a ban that was still in force on the day I retired. It is difficult to argue with the decision in view of the high number of casualties in Germany. However, some idea of the popularity of air displays in Germany can be obtained from the fact that up until the Ramstein accident the Red Arrows had performed 170 displays in Germany, a number which 13 years on, far exceeds the number of Red Arrows displays in any other single overseas country. The last two occasions the Red Arrows were seen performing in Germany were at Cologne on 21 August 1988 and RAF Wildenrath the day after. It would have been nice to have had British, American, and French formation teams flying over the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin when the two halves of that beautiful city merged but it was not to be.

A further repercussion following the Ramstein accident was that some other European countries banned all over-flight of the crowd by display aircraft, whether singly or in formation. After much sucking of teeth in high places, the Red Arrows were authorised to continue flying certain over-the-crowd manoeuvres, provided the aircraft were in a stable formation or were diverging from each other. This decision was justified because of the trust the RAF placed in the skills of the Red Arrows pilots. However, the crowd rear arrival was changed so that the aircraft flew overhead at not below 1,000 feet above the ground. That change was no more than a sop to criticism from some quarters since the arrival was flown with all nine aircraft in a stable position relative to each other and there was no collision risk whatsoever. Increasing the height by 500 feet or more made no difference whatsoever to the safety of the manoeuvre.

Another manoeuvre where aircraft fly directly towards the crowd is my all-time favourite, the Vixen Break; seven aircraft fly towards the crowd and then break upwards and outwards in what is perceived by many as the Team's most spectacular manoeuvre. The Vixen Break has always been considered safe because each aircraft diverges from all the others but some individual aircraft end up flying over the crowd at low level. There have always been a number of other occasions when some, or all, of the aircraft flew behind the crowd; for example, when the Synchro Pair retire crowd rear after many of their manoeuvres. They do so to gain adequate clearance from the other aircraft and so that the crowds' attention can be focussed by the Commentator on the main section performing crowd front. However, these crowd rear passes are usually flown at least 1,000 feet above the ground and are permissible because they are generally outside the main display area.

The RAF's unilateral decision to allow the Red Arrows to continue flying these particular manoeuvres did not find favour in some overseas countries. In particular the French and Dutch authorities thought the decision was arbitrary and discriminatory and they refused permission for the Red Arrows to continue performing in their airspace. This was particularly sad since the Red Arrows first ever public display had been flown in France, at Clermont Ferrand.

Back to the top       Continue to the next part of this story