The RAF's renowned aerobatics team found itself at the centre of a political mini-storm last week when it was asked to use only blue and white smoke trails (but not red) at the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony in Glasgow. The MoD briskly quashed the request, prompting dark rumours about an anti-separationist conspiracy in Whitehall. However, I can't imagine the pilots themselves even noticed, so ferociously do they have to concentrate on their day jobs.
This documentary followed the Arrows during the six months of training leading up to this year's air display season, which happens to be their 50th, and paid particular attention to the two newest members, Stew Campbell and Joe Hourston. Despite being expert flyers who served with 617 squadron (still known as the Dam Busters after the unit's World War Two exploits) in Afghanistan, Campbell and Hourston (pictured below) found getting up to speed with the Red Arrows an exceedingly exacting process. "It's the hardest flying I've ever done," Campbell confessed. "Far more stressful than being on operations in Afghanistan."
This inside view of the Red Arrows as they trained in Lincolnshire and under the dazzling skies of Cyprus was instructive in several respects, not least that the team is probably the last stand of the heroic age of the Royal Air Force. Deadly budget cuts and cold-eyed bean-counters are on their tails, and some of their Hawk aircraft are over 30 years old. However, you might also have concluded that anyone applying for a job with the Arrows must have had their judgement permanently impaired by altitude sickness. Nine aircraft performing complicated stunts at 400mph with only six feet between their wingtips sounds, on paper, like a short ride to oblivion, but here they were, practising it three times a day, five times a week to get it right.
The Arrows pop up all over the place, at royal occasions, air displays and sporting events, so a large chunk of the population must be familiar with the palpitation-evoking effect of all this high-speed expertise screaming past a few hundred feet overhead, or describing multi-coloured bomb-bursts high up in the sun. Spectacular onboard camerawork conveyed the way gravity and perspective are inverted and scrambled during an Arrows display, not least during a particularly intimidating (for the flyers, that is) manoeuvre called the "Rollback". This involves the pilot pulling his aircraft vertically upwards and then performing a 360 degree corkscrew around the aeroplane next to him, before slotting back perfectly into formation. When Stew and Joe finally got the hang of doing this in tandem, you sensed their quest to pass the end-of-term entrance exam by the Air Vice Marshall was a foregone conclusion, even though the film tried to spin out the suspense until the 59th minute.
Eddie Redmayne's voice-over kept using that exasperatingly abused term "iconic", but (cliché or not) icons are what the Arrows are. Almost as impressive as the brilliance of their flying was the clipped efficiency with which team leader Jim Turner (known as Red One, pictured above) ran the operation. This is a world where fast-moving events demand instant decisions, and Turner makes them. "If you've got a pilot who isn't performing in the air, he will be removed," he said matter-of-factly. In flight, he controls his squad with terse monosyllabic commands. Post-flight debriefings are conducted with haiku-like minimalism. "Any comments? Number six?" "No." "Number five?" "No". "Okay really good effort, well done." How very different from the dither and inefficiency of "normal" life. No wonder the pilots get addicted to it.
Add comment