This is OUR life - the 32nd Season - Tony Cunnane's Life and Times

This is an article I wrote in October 1996, and which was subsequently published by several magazines. It tells the story of the Red Arrows 32nd year (October 1995-October 1996) - and was written shortly after This Is Your Life was broadcast by BBC TV - hence my article is called This is Our Life.

1996 has been quite a year for the Red Arrows what with one thing and another. Never before can the Team have had such a high profile and to cap it all I have been asked to write for the prestigious Royal Air Force College Journal. As it happens, the deadline for copy neatly coincides with the completion of the latest Red Arrows’ event and publication will be well after the embargo date for publicising the event. I refer, of course, to 'This is Your Life', recorded in the magnificent setting of College Hall Dining Room on 23rd September 1996. Although the Subject was the then Leader of the Red Arrows, Squadron Leader John Rands OBE, the programme was intended to be a tribute to all members of the Team and also was meant to show off the Royal Air Force in a positive light to a television audience of about 10 million. We were all privileged to have the Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Michael Graydon, on the set and the personal message he carried from our Commandant-in-Chief, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, was a great honour for the entire Team.

But let’s get things in order. After the decision to close Scampton had been announced in Westminster, a great deal of work was done to find a new home for the Team. Rumours were rife. A local newspaper in Cornwall rang to ask if it were true that the Team was moving to St Mawgan; another newspaper in Elgin asked if it were true that we were going to Lossiemouth. The faithful fans of the Team in the Cirencester area wrote to say that they would be delighted to welcome the Reds back to Kemble. An executive of a well-known civilian airport in the south west, much frequented by the Red Arrows, offered his airfield. In fact, just about every RAF airfield in the UK was considered and every one was rejected for one reason or another. For a while it looked as though the Team might be homeless.

At last, it was announced that the Team would move to Marham. Shortly afterwards that move was put on hold for at least 2 years for operational reasons. Time was now getting very short. The rundown of Scampton was well advanced. Eventually, it was disclosed that the Team would move to Cranwell as an interim move for two to three years until Marham became available. However, because of congestion in the Cranwell and nearby Barkston Heath circuits, and the fact that the Coningsby climb out and let down lanes pass close to Cranwell’s overhead, it was also announced that the Reds would continue to practice overhead Scampton.

The Red Arrows went to South Africa and back in September and October 1995 to help the SAAF celebrate their 75 th Birthday. The last aircraft movements at Scampton, or so we thought at the time, were on 23 rd  November 1995 and the media gathered in force to see that historic airfield close down. First out that day were The Red Arrows who departed for Malaysia where they took part in an international air show called LIMA 95 on the holiday island of Langkawi. The Reds were followed by their support Hercules and almost immediately afterwards the Station Commander flew the Station Chipmunk out to Newton. I should have known better than to organise a press facility for the last aircraft flying out. But more of that later.

1996 started with the Red Arrows separated from their aircraft by some 9,000 miles - and that has never happened before. The Hawks were bedded down in a hangar at the RAAF Base Butterworth in north western Malaysia and the Australians promised not to play with them. The Red Arrows pilots and ground crew had flown home, business class, by civilian airlines to spend Christmas and the New Year with their families. Perhaps this is a good point to mention that all the 1995/96 winter tours and the June 1996 visit to Indonesia, were funded by what we came to call our ‘Pot of Gold’, over £3 million contributed by 16 British defence-related companies who all thought it worth their while to pay for having the privilege of the Red Arrows appearing on their exhibition stands at the various air shows.

Throughout that winter, there was considerable doubt whether the Red Arrows were based at Scampton, or Cranwell. Scampton had closed officially, but there was nowhere for the Team to go at Cranwell. Actually it did not matter very much (to the Red Arrows) because what was left of RAF Scampton was by then under the command of Station Commander RAF Cranwell. The 1995 official End of Season Guest Night, which has to be arranged months in advance, was held in Cambridge because of the doubt about where the Team would be in late October. Cambridge was deemed to be midway between Scampton and Marham and still convenient for the many guests who travel to the Dinner from the London area.

In early January the Reds and Blues boarded another comfortable 747 to fly back out to the Far East to be reunited with their aircraft. I came to Cranwell to do some work but could not find an office so instead I flew out to Singapore to do advance PR for the Team. After a few days flying out of Butterworth to regain currency, the Red Arrows pressed on to Australia where they displayed in spectacular fashion in Canberra and over Sydney Harbour Bridge - the latter on Australia Day in front of an estimated audience of 1.2 million folk. Dedicated PRO though I am, I cannot claim that the entire crowd came out especially to see the Red Arrows but see them they did and we claimed that as an all-time world record for any aviation event. On the way back from Australia, the Team called in at Bandar Seri Bagawan and Manila to give public displays before large and ecstatic crowds before settling down in Singapore for 10 days or so displaying at Asian Aerospace 1996.

The Team arrived at Cranwell on 20 th February - exactly on schedule of course - and that marked the official end of the 1995 display season. The two departing Team members, Squadron Leaders Sean Chiddention and Benny Ball went off to pastures new about 4 months late. The FNGs, Dave Stobie and Andy Offer, although they had been with the Team to the Far East and Australia to under-study their future role, really felt that at last they had arrived. In fact Dave Stobie had had a baptism of fire, having been pressed into the Red 3 slot early following a road accident in Langkawi that put Sean Perrett out of action for several months.

To greet the Team at their new base there was a large press facility and a great deal of snow. The new Squadron HQ was, how shall I put it, a bit tatty compared to what had been left behind at Scampton and the 1 st Line ground crew were (and still are) accommodated in Portakabins, separated from the HQ by all of 300 metres. Some may say this was a good thing but it made it all the more difficult to maintain the close contact that is essential to the efficient operation of any squadron.  It took many weeks before the new HQ began to look even partly presentable but everyone at Cranwell made us feel welcome and when works services were needed they were carried out expeditiously. We are still not quite sure how the Station Commander managed to fund this ‘no cost’ temporary move.

Because of the difficulty of integrating Red Arrows’ flying into the crowded Cranwell and Barkston circuits, most of the 1996 practices took place overhead Scampton where Restricted Area R313 was still in force. There was meant to be a high definition video link between the Team’s video man on the ground at Scampton and a VTR in the Team’s debriefing room at Cranwell but that was still not fully functional at the end of the 1996 season (we could transmit video films from Scampton to Cranwell but not live pictures from the camera). To provide the leader with a video on which to base his debriefing, one of the Hawks had to land on at Scampton, pick up the video and then dash off to join up with the other 8 aircraft. Jolly good fun but it begged the question: if one aircraft can land and take off from Scampton why not all nine? The media gleefully picked up on the fact that aircraft were still using the Scampton runway.

In spite of everything, including the incredibly gloomy March weather, the first 9-ship formation was flown on 29 th March, the last day before Easter leave. Fortuitously, whilst en route that day between Cranwell and Scampton, the Team was able to flypast the official opening ceremony of WAVE, the RAF Waddington Aircraft Viewing Enclosure - a new and long-needed car parking and refreshment area off the side of the busy A15 at the end of Waddington’s runway. The first 9-ship each year is a significant event for the Team, especially so for the pilots in their first year. The Team departed for their annual detachment to Akrotiri on 17th April and ‘Red Suit Day’ was 2 nd May. For those not familiar with Red Arrows’ operations, ‘Red Suit Day’ is when the Team is granted Public Display Authority - their licence to display in public. As soon as PDA is granted the Team divest themselves of their green growbags and don the bespoke red suits.

The other innovation during the year was the Red Arrows’ launch onto the World Wide Web in the Spring. It is amazing how many people found the Internet site even before we started advertising it; dedicated surfers will know that the Internet ‘search engines’ are extremely efficient. Very soon up to 300 people a day were accessing the pages and there was a peak at over 1,000 hits per day for several weeks following a complimentary article in the Daily Telegraph, a 4 star award in the leading Internet Magazine and the award of a Gold Medal for the most innovative new site on the Internet in 1996. The surfers came from all parts of the world - the most outlandish one was from Balikpapan in Papua New Guinea - but we discovered that some fairly influential companies and organisations had been visiting our pages: Boeing Aircraft Corporation, Dornier, British Aerospace, McDonnell Douglas, GEC/Marconi, Breitling Watches, and the French Air Force Academy to name but a few. We have the facility to update our pages daily if we wish and, at the time of writing, there are over 30,000 words of text (10 times the length of this article) and about 50 full colour pictures of pilots, aircraft and displays on line for viewing.

Not a lot of people know that Internet Service Providers (and, therefore, anyone in their pay) can identify everyone who accesses their pages! This is worth bearing in mind if you accidentally come across the other ‘Red Arrows’ Internet site: this one features hard and soft porn and operates from a mailing address at New York City Railway Station. No, I am not going to publish the URL (Internet address); if you are that desperate you must search for it yourself! Indications are that this other site has never even heard of the Royal Air Force Aerobatic Team and current legal advice given to us is that there is probably nothing we can do to prevent the authors using the Red Arrows’ name even though it is registered as a trade mark.

There were two ‘spectaculars’ in early June both given blanket coverage by the media. The first was a flypast with Concord over London’s Heathrow airport on 2 nd June to celebrate the airport’s 50 th Anniversary. The second was on 8 th June over Wembley Stadium to mark the opening of a football competition called Euro 96. Perhaps it is just as well the Red Arrows were not scheduled to flypast over the final. The television audience for the opening ceremony, potentially 400 million according to the organisers, had a much better view of the flypast than those in the arena who were able to catch just a glimpse of the Hawks with their red, white and blue trails as they flashed over the rather small skyport in the centre of the arena.

Later the same month the Team set out again on what was becoming a well-worn route to the Far East. This time the destination was Jakarta and the event was the first Indonesian Air Show for 10 years. As it happens, the last time the Red Arrows displayed in Jakarta was in 1986 at the first Indonesian Air Show. Dr Habibie, the Minister for Technology and the Organiser of both Indonesian Air Shows, said at a grand reception in honour of the Red Arrows in the presence of Michael Portillo the Defence Secretary, that Jakarta Air Shows would in future be held every year and that he had already put in a bid for the Red Arrows for 1997. I am not sure how welcome that snippet of news was because it is a long, tiring journey to Indonesia by Hawk and this year it kept the Team out of the UK for about 4 weeks at the height of the European display season and led to the cancellation of a number of shows including, sadly, the Waddington Air Days and several shows in Italy.

The Red Arrows have continued to support charities in many parts of the UK through the medium of the Team’s own charity, the Red Arrows’ Trust. Over £20,000 was disbursed during 1996 up to the end of August and upwards of £15,000 more was expected to be allocated in the remaining months of the year. The money comes in from the sale of Red Arrows’ approved souvenirs and the use of the Red Arrows’ trademarks and logos on approved merchandise including the highly popular Red Arrows’ virtual reality flight simulator. The nice thing about the Trust is that the pilots themselves have a large say in how the money is to be used. A Dutch company released in September 1996 an excellent CD-ROM of Red Arrows’ photographs and 1997 should, hopefully, see the release of a multi-media encyclopaedic CD-ROM including everything anyone could possibly wish to know about the Red Arrows plus a virtual reality game based on real air-to-air footage which will allow players to choose which position in the Team they wish to fly.

In August there was a most welcome visit by four Russian officers including the Russian Knights aerobatic team Leader, Lieutenant Colonel Aleksander Vladimirovich Lichkun, and Deputy Leader, Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Alekseivich Kovalskiy. These same four officers had visited the Team at Scampton in 1991. The 1990 Red Arrows had met them all in Kiev the year before during the Red Arrows’ foray behind the Iron Curtain. This time the Russians came by civil airline since their team activity is temporarily suspended following a tragic accident at Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam as the Knights were returning home from LIMA 95 in Malaysia. Four display pilots were killed when three of the SU-27 aircraft flew into the ground whilst formating on the starboard wing of their support IL-76 transport during a descent through cloud. The pilots in the two aircraft on the port wing, Colonels Lichkun and Kovalskiy, survived to tell the story and visit the Red Arrows. The purpose of the Cranwell visit was to learn more about the logistics of operating an aerobatic team world-wide and where better to come for that purpose? Naturally, the Russians took the opportunity to fly with the Reds and accompanied the Team to displays in the West Country where they helped on the ground dispensing Red Arrows’ brochures and stickers.

So, as I write this, the 32nd Season of the Red Arrows has come to a close and 3132 displays have now been flown since the first one in May 1965. The 14 th Leader, Squadron Leader Simon Meade, is already with us understudying John Rands, and the three new pilots, numbers 103 to 105, have already been having a look around. The Red Arrows will certainly reach new heights in the 1997 Season. The arrival of Simon at 6ft 1in, Red 2 Ian Smith at 6ft 3in, Red 3 Gary Waterfall at 6ft 3in and Red 5 Andy Cubin, a mere 5ft 11in, brings the average height of the Team to 6ft 1in - helped enormously by 2 nd Line Engineer Dick Burns who tops out at 6ft 5in and hindered by a certain pilot who is but 5ft 8½ in.

At Scampton in recent years we had upwards of 3,000 visitors a year. Admittedly many went primarily to see Nigger’s Grave and pay a nostalgic visit to the Dam Busters’ former home, but nevertheless every visitor bar none also wanted to see and visit the Red Arrows. We cannot cope with anything like those numbers in our present accommodation at Cranwell. The 1 st Line Ground Crew are still cramped into tiny Portakabins. The HQ element is now reasonably furnished and we have a new coffee bar, an essential piece of work that has to be done whenever a squadron moves home. This one was generously donated and installed by a relative of one of the Reds. The building itself is still far too small in which to entertain all the visitors who wish to see the Team on home ground; we have nowhere to display the hundreds of trophies and other awards presented to the Team over 32 years. And what are we to do with our visitors while the Team is practising overhead Scampton? Speaking personally, I do not miss standing out in the wind and the rain talking to visitors but somehow watching the flying on live video is not quite the same.

During 1996 countless ordinary people around the world, as well as the media and other air forces, have acclaimed the Red Arrows as being the premier aerobatic team in the World. What a pity we do not have a Headquarters and Visitors’ Centre to match.