What about that famous black Labrador dog?

There was now the delicate PR problem of explaining why, if Scampton was to be closed because it was no longer needed, the Red Arrows were going to continue their training flying there

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother had contacted the Commandant Central Flying School after reading the two stories in the Times to express her sorrow that the Red Arrows were soon to be made homeless and asking how she might help. The Commandant would not tell me what he had advised the Commandant-in-Chief to do. Another telephone call to me came from Ronaldsway Airport on the Isle of Man. They wanted to offer hangarage for the Red Arrows' Hawks once they were mothballed.

Soon afterwards we learned of another plot, and I put it that way deliberately. We were not officially told of the new plot but the gist of it simply emerged; no-one I asked could remember where the story originated but we had all heard it. The Red Arrows would, according to this new plot, move to Marham as originally planned but all the training flying would take place at Sculthorpe, a base with a very long runway that had been used by the US Air Force for many years but was now inactive. There was a major flaw to that plot that we at the Red Arrows could see immediately but no one outside the Red Arrows had apparently thought of it. The idea was that the Red Arrows would take off for the first slot in the morning, practice overhead the airfield at Sculthorpe and then land there. In the meantime, the ground crew would have left Marham as soon as they had seen off the Red Arrows and travelled to Sculthorpe by road aiming to be there in time for the Red Arrows when they landed about 35 minutes later. The problem was that the distance between Marham and Sculthorpe as the Hawk flies is 15 nautical miles but the distance by road, narrow twisting Norfolk roads, is 27 miles and would take very nearly an hour. It was an ill-conceived idea and we heard no more about it.

There was an official announcement on 26 August 1995. The Red Arrows were to be based temporarily at the RAF College Cranwell for up to two years while the MoD searched for a permanent home for the Team. One very curiously worded report stated, 'The team will not, however, be able to fly over Cranwell. Instead, they will be accompanied by fire engines and ground controllers to their old base of RAF Scampton, Lincolnshire, which closes next month, to practise their precision aerobatic routines. The team, which needs a six-mile wide cone-shaped area free of all other aircraft in which to fly, originally planned to move to RAF Marham in Norfolk, but other squadrons complained of a possible clash with training. After the transfer, a daily convoy of fire engines, emergency trucks and ground controllers will leave RAF Cranwell to drive the 25 miles to the deserted base at Scampton and stand by in case of problems. They will then drive back to Cranwell where the Hawks of the Red Arrows will land and the crews return to their quarters.'

An MoD spokesman that day said, 'The aerodrome and buildings at Scampton won't be disposed of until 1998. Most of the family quarters will be retained by the RAF for people working at Cranwell and Waddington. The Arrows can only do their intricate manoeuvres over RAF premises in the interests of safety. Keeping the Scampton runway open as a stand by will cost an extra £1.6 a year.'

By and large the population close to Cranwell were delighted by the news. The problem with Cranwell was the same as with all the other airfields: the station could not afford to stop its own intensive flying for six 30-minute periods daily to give the Red Arrows sole use of the skies overhead. And, of course, there was now the delicate PR problem of explaining why, if Scampton was to be closed because it was no longer needed, the Red Arrows were going to continue their training flying there - and at some considerable expense. Curiously, the local media never asked that question, probably because they were so pleased that the Red Arrows would still be flying over Scampton. Nor did the media question the cost of maintaining the runway at Scampton, necessary in case any of the Red Arrows needed to use it in an emergency. The media might also have asked how the MoD hoped to sell off the base to business concerns when the Red Arrows would be roaring overhead six times a day in winter. But they did not.

It was clear, to us in the Red Arrows at least, that the decision to close Scampton had been taken hastily and without giving due thought, or any thought, to the consequences. One very senior officer whom I met socially several years later cornered me and asked, 'Are they still blaming me for closing Scampton?' I was forced to be honest and say that many people were but of course that didn't mean that they knew the inside story of what led to that decision. 'Suffice it to say,' replied the very senior officer with a resigned look on his face, 'it was not my decision. I tried to warn people of the difficulties that it would create but I was over-ruled.' I looked at him with raised eyebrows but he merely smiled and refused to be drawn. It was that famous need-to-know principle at work again.

Had a decision to disband the Team been taken at the time the Defence Costs Study was published, I think the MoD would have got away with it. However, so much publicity about the Red Arrows was generated once the announcement that Scampton was to close was made that it was then too late to tell the great British public that the Red Arrows would be disbanded. There would have been an outcry – and not only in the UK. The statement that the Red Arrows would move to Cranwell as a temporary measure was, I suspect, made in desperation just four weeks before we set out for the Middle East and South Africa on the first part of the autumn tour. At least we would now have a home to come back to.

Very soon, a lot of people became concerned about another home that might be needed. Nigger, Guy Gibson's black Labrador, had lain in his grave just outside number two hangar at Scampton for 52 years. A lot of people thought that if the base were to be sold off or abandoned the dog should be exhumed and moved somewhere safe . 'Grave doubts over final resting place' was just one of the newspaper punning headlines that appeared in the spring of 1995. There was a flood of letters to newspapers, Scampton and the MoD offering suggestions about what to do. The main worry most people had was that if Scampton base was left unattended, then vandals would get in and vandalise the grave. Suggestions included: making a shrine on the side of the A15 at the exact point where the dog was run over in 1943; moving the remains to the Petwood Hotel in Woodhall Spa where the Dam Busters transferred after leaving Scampton and where their annual reunions were still held; reuniting the dog with his Master in the graveyard in Holland where Guy Gibson is buried; moving the dog to East Kirkby, the home of the well-known aviation heritage museum and the airfield from which Gibson took off on the mission from which he never returned.

Inevitably the arguments started up again between those who maintain that the dog was never buried outside the hangar and those, including me, who maintain that he was. I had irrefutable evidence. On one of my files there was a photocopy of part of a letter written by Flight Sergeant 'Chiefie' Powell in 1986, shortly before he died. Powell was the man who collected the dog's body from a cell at the Guardroom at Scampton's main entrance immediately after the accident. Chiefie Powell had drawn on the back page of his letter a sketch map indicating exactly where he had buried the dog and that was exactly where the grave's plaque now lies. I had intended to save that letter for posterity when Scampton closed down but, sadly, when I remembered and went to collect the file, I was too late. It, along with hundreds of other Scampton files, had been destroyed as part of the closing down procedures.

Finally, I had a letter from a helpful person who said that he knew of someone at Sheffield University who was an expert at locating human bones hidden underground. He had, apparently, recently helped the police in finding buried bodies connected with some gruesome murders. The writer thought that it ought to be possible to locate dog's remains using the same technique. The Station Commander, Group Captain Chris Burwell, declined to take up that offer and I agreed with him. From a PR point of view it could have had the wrong result.

In the end, it was decided to leave the dog at peace where he was buried until such time as RAF Scampton was sold off, when it would become a problem for the new owners. Group Captain Burwell was mightily relieved because that meant he no longer had to make, or be associated with, such a controversial decision. When I finally left Scampton in 2001 Nigger was still there and his grave was still lovingly tended, as it had been for many years, by a local resident, Mervyn Hallam.

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