The UK Royal Air Force mounted the biggest flypast seen in Europe for many years over RAF Fairford, Gloucestershire, last Friday. On the ground, the Queen presented new colors to the RAF and the RAF Regiment with due ceremony, to mark the service’s 90th anniversary. Fortunately, the popular song title came true, and the rain did not fall on her parade. Five minutes later, however, a heavy thunderstorm flooded the car parks and caused the abandonment of the Royal International Air Tattoo scheduled to follow at Fairford over the weekend.
Aviation International News flew in the dress rehearsal for the flypast last Tuesday. We took off from RAF Cranwell in a Dominie T1 twinjet, in formation with another Dominie and two King Air 200s. These aircraft are used by the RAF to train rear crew and multi-engine pilots respectively. We headed for RAF Brize Norton, where we joined up with the Hercules C1K that would be our formation leader within “Package 2” of the formation, callsign Albert. Above us, nine Tucano basic trainers joined the package, while a tenth Tucano flew higher still, issuing radio commands to “whip” us all into the best shape. Elsewhere over southern England, the other formations were joining up in designated holding areas.
