Red Arrow Air Show

Red arrows in formation

www.mybrightonandhove.org.uk

August bank holiday - a thronging West Pier.

Out of a brilliant, clear blue sky they came, streaking past in vivid-red silence, followed next instant by a massive roar. The Red Arrows.

First in a diamond wedge tight as a fist they looped, then line ahead they looped again, flashing a few dozen feet over our pier before buzzing the Palace Pier.

After such preliminaries they really got going. Two clever-devils broke away and did breathtaking and obviously dangerous feats while the other seven played above, all now using multi-coloured smoke-trails; overall a fantastic spectacle. Soon the most hair-raising stunt of the clever devil duo unfolded.

One of the pair flew east beyond the Palace Pier whilst the other went west, away from our overcrowded pleasure-planks. Then, simultaneously, they both executed a tight U-turn and set course, one for our West Pier, the other for the Palace Pier, losing height as they approached. Each zoomed a score or so feet above their respective piers, still sharply losing height! - thus heading at the water and... pointed directly at each other!

Then, almost zero feet above the water they levelled off, still heading di­rectly at each other over that stretch of water between the two piers. At the last possible instant they banked sideways, one right one left, thus flashing their underbellies by each other, wing-tips al-most skimming the water.

I distinctly recall leaning on the pier rail (I was 'working') looking DOWN at the two planes executing this manoeuvre, more than once, streaming fabulous multi-coloured smoke.

Another trick was for the whole nine, line ahead, to zoom between the two most prominent high-rise buildings - the Metropole and Grand, I think - on the seafront...

As I recall it a tragic sequel to this display made it stand out as all the more spectacular. Not so very many months after doing their Brighton high-summer show the Red Arrows, while putting on another display elsewhere, were involved in a serious crash into spectators, among whom fatalities occurred.

The powers that be decided that, henceforth, for reasons of public safety the altitude level of the Red Arrow stunts had to be raised.

The actual date of the Red Arrows display was August 7th, 1970.
Arthur Thickett - Deckhand, West Pier