Thanks for the sentiments folks - they are good and, along with BBMF, are one of the few things that we have that keeps the RAF in the public eye, albeit normally for different reasons (and no, although we have many in light blue, I don't think either of them are of Kiwi extraction...
. First displays are scheduled for the back end of May in Cyprus at the end of their work up and then Southend. So there is time in hand, and I imagine that with about 12 or 13 Hawks on the Reds inventory, a couple in depth maintenance may just have a bit of extra engineering effort applied to them now, although if not, there is always the option of repainting a couple of the Valley Hawks....the tricky bit will be whether the ejectee (the synchro pair lead) will recover well enough and quickly enough, or whether they draw someone back into the fold, or run an 8-ship for a while. We shall see and, hopefully, it will be a 9-ship at Southend.
a tough time for the Team to get over it and around it, but humour has already started coming through - as has been posted elsewhere, 2 F3 drivers flying together, no navigators, and no ATC or GCI...it was never going to end well... And a reminder of the Reds accident at Akrotiri in 1984, when one of the synchro pair scraped down the runway, luckiest chap around pulled out of the aircraft disintegrating around him by his parachute; one of the Chinook squadrons were out there at the time doing the Beirut evacuation and held up scorecards with "0" on them as the rest of the Reds landed and taxiied back in...
Good to know they are both OK, the ac can be fixed or replaced.
Good to see you on line mate! Hope it's not too hot
MG Mark
