The dangers are always at the forefront of my mind
Red Arrows Squadron Leader Martin Pert on the joys – and the jeopardies – of commanding the world’s most magnificent aerobatics team
IN the Red Arrows’ briefing room the cream of British fast jet pilots are watching their latest practice sortie on film – and coming in for a barrage of criticism. ‘Wide!’ shouts one critic. ‘Late!’ barks another.
It seems barely a moment can pass without some Smart Alec piping up about one of these elite formation fliers being inches out of position or microseconds out of sync.
You would think it might irritate them. Until it becomes clear the critics are the pilots themselves. They are calling out their own mistakes before a teammate does – or worse, before the one they call Red 1 stops the tape and stares meaningfully at the culprit.
Thus, under the eagle eye of 37-year-old Scottish flying ace Martin Pert, the RAF display team strives for excellence at its base in Lincolnshire in a year when delivering it counts more than ever. For 2018 is the RAF’s centenary. If ever the pressure was on the Red Arrows to perform, it is now.
But there is a competing concern – safety. In March, the team lost engineer Jonathan Bayliss in a horror accident when one of their Hawk aircraft plunged to the ground on Anglesey and exploded in flames. Pilot David Stark survived after ejecting in the nick of time. And in the last few years two others – both pilots – have lost their lives in separate incidents.
Yet the aerobatics continue with the tiniest of margins of error. The fast jets fly as close as 6ft from each other’s wing tips.
Little wonder the training is long and exhaustive. In preparation for the display season which is about to begin, Paisley-born Red 1 and his team take to the skies three times a day, five days a week in a rehearsal regime lasting seven months.
AND, during that time, nobody can afford to be off their game. ‘As team leader the dangers are at the forefront of my mind,’ admits Squadron Leader Pert, who took over as Red 1 last September.
‘I have to look each of my pilots in the eye in every brief that we do in the morning to make sure that they are both mentally and physically ready to fly that amount of sorties.’
He must look himself in the mirror and ensure the same is true of himself – while remembering that if Red 1 does not fly, no one does.
He says: ‘You’ll find, myself included, that we’re quite disciplined about early bedtimes, particularly on a Wednesday and Thursday because there is a cumulative effect to that amount of flying.
‘It’s draining, it’s tiring and you are applying an awful lot of mental energy. You are concentrating for 30 minutes of pure flying. It’s not like concentrating on a crossword. It’s a tunnel vision, almost, of always being in the right position at the right time.’
Days ago, following the completion of a five-week training exercise in Greece, the team was awarded its Public Display Authority – formal acknowledgement that it has reached the standard required to perform at air shows and ceremonies.
Coming just two months after a fatal crash and the replacement of injured Flt Lt Stark by another pilot, Mike Ling, who had not been part of the first five months’ training, it represents a remarkable achievement. It is one which Sqn Ldr Pert says took ‘unstinting stoicism, grit and sheer determination’ from all 120 people who make up the Arrows’ air and ground team.
As Red 1, his working day during the training months begins at 7.30am with a weather briefing to determine which aerobatics will be possible. Low cloud means stunts involving high altitudes are out, which is why the team practises three new routines every year – known as full, rolling or flat – all geared to the level of cloud cover.
Then, by 9am, the pilots are climbing into their G-suits in preparation for their first sortie, every second and each roll and twist of which has been choreographed by their team leader.
Minutes later, they will be in their Hawk T1 aircraft making their final checks before takeoff. They taxi in convoy to the runway, bomb down it and reconvene, moments later, in the skies. Having begun training last autumn with just three Red Arrows in formation, the team work up to the iconic ‘nine-ship’ which crowds expect to see.
‘That is a real key moment,’ says Sqn Ldr Pert. ‘It’s what the Red Arrows are famed for, having nine aircraft in diamond formation and it takes about five and a half months to get to that stage.’
SOME may wonder why the team requires more than half a year of training annually just to fly together in their full complement of nine. The reason is the team is fluid, evolving, gaining members and losing others every year.
Typically each pilot remains with the Reds for three years, but at the end of each season they move to a different place in the formation – and that requires months more practise to perfect. Only Red 1 stays in position at the head of the formation for the full three-year tenure.
‘There’s something called low arousal in the military flying world,’ explains Sqn Ldr Pert. ‘If you leave a pilot in the same job for too long, even in something as dynamic and varied as Red Arrows flying, it will become mundane to him, it can become dangerous if he is in a low state of arousal.
‘So, to keep things fresh both from a team perspective and from a personal point of view we have to start again every year and I get to design a new display for every year of my three-year tenure. It’s a vital process, both internally to keep things safe and novel, but also externally to the paying public who don’t want to watch the same display they saw last year. Of course, that brings with it a training burden.’
The safety burden is no less great. In August 2011, shortly before the Scot joined the Red Arrows for the first time as a team member, pilot Jon Egging died during an air festival in
Bournemouth. He is thought to have been close to unconsciousness due to Gforce when his plane came down in a field.
Then, weeks after Sqn Ldr Pert joined the team, tragedy struck again when a colleague’s ejector seat fired while still on the ground. Then a Flight Lieutenant, he could only watch in horror as his team mate Sean Cunningham was blasted 200ft into the air in his seat and fell without his parachute opening.
‘I saw Perspex flying across the concrete floor,’ he told an inquest. ‘It then became clear that someone had ejected.’
Looking up from his own aircraft, he could see Red 4 still strapped in his chair, arms flailing as he plummeted towards the tarmac. He never survived the fall. The manufacturer of the ejector seat later admitted a breach of the Health and Safety at Work Act.
The latest tragedy came on March 20, shortly after the Hawk jet piloted by David Stark had taken off from RAF Valley on Anglesey, bound for the Lincolnshire base at RAF Scampton. While he was able to eject, passenger Corporal Bayliss, 41, did not do so and was in the aircraft when it hit the ground. Inquiries by North Wales Police and the Ministry of Defence continue.
‘There is no getting away from it,’ admits Red 1. ‘There is an inherent danger in all military fast jet flying. It’s about tempering that risk compared to the benefit of being on display for the public.
‘We scrutinise in fine detail every single manoeuvre that we do. We’ll go through training records to make sure the pilots are up to it, to make sure the moves they’re making are safe moves and that they’ve always got somewhere to escape to should it go wrong.’
Sqn Ldr Pert caught the flying bug after his family moved from Paisley to Hertfordshire when he was seven.
HE recalls: ‘Our house was just behind Leavesden Aerodrome, which was an old RollsRoyce airfield, and they used to put on an air show every year. Between that and having been at the RAF Leuchars air shows in Scotland as a kid, something sparked.’
By the age of 13, he was determined to be an RAF pilot and geared his education towards his ambition, focusing on maths and science subjects. By 19, he was accepted into the RAF on a scholarship and by 20 he was airborne, progressing through a bewildering array of military jets.
His favourite was the Harrier GR7/9 which he flew in operations in Afghanistan for several years before putting his name forward for the Red Arrows. Of the 20 or so applications given serious consideration, ten pilots are invited to Scampton to shadow existing team members. Only three at the most are taken on each year.
During that first tenure, the Scot progressed from Red 2 to Red 4 to Red 8 and took part in some of the most memorable flypasts in recent years. They included the London Olympics and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, both in 2012, and the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow in 2014.
At the close of that season he and wife Susie and their two young children moved to Lossiemouth and he returned to frontline action as part of a new squadron flying Typhoons. That involved operating as an air defence force over UK skies, air policing in the Baltic and operations over Iraq and Syria as part of the UK’s contribution to fighting Islamic State. It was while
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he was flying sorties from a base in Cyprus that he was invited to apply for perhaps the most glamorous role in the RAF – a position requiring flying skills, organisational abilities and a certain PR panache.
Sqn Ldr Pert is well aware that Red 1 is the RAF’s most visible ambassador, the fearless fast jet airman who inspires youngsters to dream of a career in the skies. It is essentially for those potential recruits of the future that the Red Arrows exist.
Not that the job always necessitates a stiff yes-sir/no-sir formality from those under his command. Indeed, outside the briefing room, the atmosphere is surprisingly relaxed. The man everyone calls ‘boss’ during briefings becomes ‘Perty’ when he steps away from the lectern. And the pilots, known as numbers two to nine during official team talks, have first names again when they leave the briefing room.
Friday is fish day. Which means that, 45 minutes after performing aerobatics which would put most mortals off flying for good, these guys are chatting away in the Red Arrows’ sitting room with fish suppers in their laps.
Next to it is the kitchen where their coffee mugs hang on the wall – amusingly in the formation in which the pilots fly. Only when it is briefing time again do the faces grow serious.
‘That is probably my personal leadership style,’ says Red 1. ‘There are times when the relaxed atmosphere isn’t appropriate and the guys know that and it is something that I carefully watch on a day-to-day basis. I know when I need to assert myself and when that isn’t appropriate, but the rest of the team are professional enough to know exactly the same.’
Now that they have received their Public Display Authority, the pilots’ green flying suits have been replaced by their familiar red ones – and perhaps the most crucial display season in the Arrows’ 54-year history looms.
Included will be a major flypast over London on July 10 and, on the 28th, an appearance at Scotland’s National Airshow at the National Museum of Flight in East Fortune, East Lothian.
For this doyen of the skies, is the stint as Red 1 the swansong of a glittering career?
‘Not at all,’ says the team leader. ‘Hopefully I’ll go back on the frontline. That’s something I personally get a lot of satisfaction from. I could carry on flying until I’m 55 years old. There’s still plenty of things I want to achieve in the military, so I just hope this is another arrow in my quiver.’
With that, he is up and heading back to the briefing room.
There is an old saying in this extraordinary squadron that there is no such thing as a perfect display. But there’s a look in this man’s eye which suggests he’s out to prove it isn’t true.
‘Hopefully I’ll go back on the frontline’