That moment upon flying through a solitary cloud when the lead pilot thinks 'what the hell; it'll look cool', and decides to perform a centenary split. Why yes, yes it does. ^^

Ladies and gentlefurs, I present to you the Red Arrows! Performing at the Royal International Air Tattoo at RAF Fairford, this move is a new move introduced to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the RAF. The manoeuvre involves all 9 Arrows approaching the crowd in a chevron formation. The outer two planes, one producing red smoke and the other producing blue smoke, turn into the chevron as the 7 remaining planes, producing white smoke, climb in unison. The outer two planes then cross each others' paths, while the rest of the formation climbs to perform a break after a few hundred feet of vertical climb. Heralding well for the rest of the airshow, the team pulled it off beautifully on the first day, and the rest of their display was spectacular, as always.

The Red Arrows represent my favourite aerobatic display team for two reasons; not only are they superior in skill and daring to most other display teams, but the aircraft they use is suited perfectly for the role. On the same day, aerobatic teams from the Italian and Spanish air forces put on a good show for the crowd, but their moves were not as ambitious, their formations not as numerous, and their aircraft not always as engaged (in the former case, one of the ten displaying aircraft just made low passes while the other nine carried out the formations). Of course, this isn't true for such teams as the Blue Angels, but herein lies the second reason that the Red Arrows are my favourite; the Blue Angels use the F-18 as a display aircraft, while the Red Arrows have the Hawk T-1. The former is a large fighter aircraft, designed for combat and efficiency, speed and tight turns in a dogfight, while the latter is a small trainer aircraft, designed to be nippy, to be easy to fly and control, to be stable and nimble in any circumstance. Hence, it is my humble opinion that the Hawks can be flown much more gracefully, and with more care than the F-18, and while both are excellent aircraft within their own fields, the Hawk pulls off the role of aerobatic display aircraft rather nicely.

Hope you enjoy!