How Arrows soared to top
QUESTION When did the Black Arrows change their name to the Red Arrows?
The Black Arrows didn’t change their name. They were a different team entirely. The closest antecedents to the Red Arrows were a team called the Yellowjacks who flew Folland Gnat training aircraft, and seven of those became the first aircraft issued to the Red Arrows.
Flying display teams in the RAF between the end of World War II and the early 1960s had a very disorganised existence. Several operational squadrons and training units formed display teams under different names, flying different types of aircraft.
There were the Tigers and the Firebirds (english electric Lightning), The Poachers and Red Pelicans (Jet Provost), Blue Diamonds (hawker hunters) and others.
however, the Air Ministry (as it was then) became concerned that display flying was distracting pilots from their primary task of training for operations.
On the other hand, flying displays were an excellent way of attracting interest in the RAF as a career and also for flying the flag for the British aerospace industry, so it was considered necessary for the RAF to continue to have a display team. This decision led to the formation of the Red Arrows, under the command of the Central Flying School.
The Black Arrows were formed by 111 Squadron, flying hawker hunter aircraft. They operated in the night fighter role, so their aircraft were black, which gave them their name. In fact, it was after a display in France that they started to use the title, having been described in the French Press as Les Fleches Noires (the Black Arrows).
The Black Arrows display team flew between 1955 and 1960. Although they had such a short existence, their innovative displays earned them a lot of fame in a short space of time. In that respect they were the forerunners of the Red Arrows. They achieved a world record by performing a ‘loop’ with a diamond formation of 24 aircraft, a feat never equalled.
The Red Arrows were formed at RAF Little Rissington, Gloucestershire, in 1965. They have moved home several times since and are now based at RAF Cranwell, Lincolnshire, though much of their training is carried out above the former RAF Scampton, 20 miles away.
In 1979, the Red Arrows traded in their ageing Folland Gnat aircraft for the newer British Aerospace hawk T1 trainer. They have carried out more than 4,800 displays in 57 countries around the world.
Although only nine aircraft take part in displays, they always take a reserve aircraft in case of technical issues.
The Ministry of Defence makes a charge for the Red Arrows to undertake a display, which is thought to be in the region of £10,000. however, that is significantly lower than the actual cost of a performance.
Bob Dillon, Edinburgh.
QUESTION Is the exterior brickwork on 10 Downing Street a black brick or is it painted black?
In 1954, the Ministry of Works carried out a survey into the rapidly deteriorating state of nos 10, 11 and 12 Downing Street. In July 1957, Prime Minister harold Macmillan appointed the independent Crawford Committee to recommend a course of remedial action.
It recommended that the existing structures be substantially rebuilt, with the Prime Minister temporarily rehoused in the interim. The Cabinet endorsed this course of action in May 1958, and the architect Raymond erith was chosen to oversee this major project.
During the renovation it was found that the famous black bricks were in fact the yellow London stock brick, which had been stained with nearly 300 years of industrial pollution. It was decided to clean the bricks and then paint them black to maintain the famous aspect of no 10.
Penny Roper, Redhill, Surrey.
QUESTION Why does hair grow more quickly from a mole than from the rest of our body?
HAIR does not typically grow faster in a mole but it often appears darker or coarser because of the presence of extra pigment-producing cells.
Cells called melanocytes produce the protective skin-darkening pigment melanin. Typically, they position themselves at the openings on the skin’s surface through which hair grows (follicles). As the hair is formed, the melanocytes inject melanin into the hair cells containing the protein keratin, giving it colour.
A mole, in dermatology, is a pigmented, flat or fleshy skin lesion, composed, for the most part, of an aggregation of these melanocytes.
It is normal for hair or hairs to grow through the surface of a mole where it is positioned over a hair follicle.
The hair breaks through the surface of the mole just as it would through any other skin cell but because of the excess melanin, the hair that grows out of a mole may appear darker or thicker than the other body hair surrounding it.
Ali Smith, Chelmsford, Essex.
QUESTION J. R. R. Tolkien intended to call his wizard Bladorthin, not Gandalf the Grey. Which other literary characters had a name change?
FURTHER to the earlier answers, Sue Townsend’s nigel Mole first appeared in a Leicester art magazine in 1980.
Two years later, the same character’s fictional diaries were broadcast on BBC radio, a series my dad said I might find interesting and I thus listened to.
But by the time The Secret Diary was published later in 1982, nigel Mole had become Adrian Mole.
The name change was apparently to avoid confusion with nigel Molesworth, whose adventures at St Custard’s prep school had appeared in comical stories in the 1950s written by Geoff Willans, with illustrations by Ronald Searle.
Tim Mickleburgh, Grimsby, Lincs.
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