43. Twenty-two Black Arrows

Unless otherwise stated, all images and video footage below is provided courtesy of Ian Stark at VIT Media, check out classicmachinefilms.

[00:00:00] Sir Patrick: Flying in an actual display is a little bit like playing an important cup match or something like that. It's not the standard league game. The standard league game are all the practices you do, basically, in rehearsal. The big day, of course, is the day of the display. And Farnborough, in particular, because it's seven days on the trot.

Early Years

[00:01:01] Sir Patrick: I was born on the 14th of July 1932, in the village of Chandler's Ford, as it was in those days, going to a preparatory school there called Sherborne House for five years and then going to Peter Symonds School in Winchester, which in those days was a direct grant grammar type school, where I stayed from 1941 to 1949.

[00:01:29] Steve W: This is Paddy Hine. Well, actually, Sir Patrick Hine, former Air Chief Marshal in the RAF and among many other things destined to take part in one of the world's greatest ever aerobatic feats. But more of that later. While school wasn't gripping Paddy's attention perhaps as much as it might, something else definitely was.

Golf, golf, golf

[00:01:56] Sir Patrick: I was besotted with golf, having taken that up in 1945 and having become, by this time - early 1949 - quite good, with a three handicap, having become a schoolboy international and I was determined to become a professional.

[00:02:14] Steve W: Paddy had written to Croham Hurst Golf Club near Croydon, applying to become their club professional. Croham Hurst politely declined in writing. But Paddy's father had mistakenly opened the letter.

[00:02:27] Sir Patrick: ...and he said, "What's all this about?" And I said, "Well Dad, to be absolutely honest with you, I've lost all interest in my school education". I was about to take A levels, incidentally, or what in those days were called Higher School Certificate, and... I want to become a professional golfer. So he went off to see the headmaster. And the headmaster said, "Mr. Hine, I think you have to accept that this is a genuine obsession with Paddy. He's not working hard enough to pass his Higher School Cert. The best thing you can do is to let him leave school now, let him play golf all through the summer, see how good he gets and then you can take a more measured decision in the autumn.

[00:03:10] Steve W: And that's exactly what Paddy did.

[00:03:13] Sir Patrick: I left school in March 1949, I played golf all through that year. I happened to win the Carris Trophy, which was the British School Boys Stroke Play Championship. I won the Hampshire County Championship at Stoneham Golf Club near Southampton and later in the year I won the Brabazon Trophy, which was also at at Stoneham. At the age of seventeen and a quarter, I think the youngest to ever win it, and that was... a victory by eight shots.  

National Service

[00:03:45] Steve W: In 1947, Clement Attlee's government had persuaded parliament to pass the National Service Act, a post-war gesture to ensure Britain could maintain its ongoing military commitments. It came into force in 1949. That meant that the young Patrick Hine would soon be called up for his National Service.

[00:04:16] Sir Patrick: National Service is often called 'conscription' in other nations. And some people, some nations, have it even today either a year or 18 months, very rarely as much as two years which we had in those days. I think in many ways it did a lot of good because it brought people in like myself; young, ill-disciplined, that sort of thing, perhaps a bit selfish and turned them into reasonable citizens... taught them self-confidence, self-belief, self-reliance, how to become a member of a team and so forth, think of other people, as well as learning all the martial arts.

[00:04:54] Steve W: And sure enough National Service intervened in Paddy's professional golfing aspirations. The RAF was beaconing. So in October, 1950...

[00:05:13] Sir Patrick:  ...two months or so after the Korean War had started, they were training some National Service people to be pilots. So I stuck my hand up and went through the selection process down at Romford and.... started pilot training in the March 1951 at a place called Booker near High Wycombe, chipmunk aircraft. I went straight through after chipmunks on Harvards and got my wings on the 6th of February 1952 which, if you remember, was the day that King George VI died and you may also recall, six years later, the day that Manchester United had their crash at Munich. And I've been a Manchester United supporter since 1948, ten years before that happened, and I'm still to this day.

Joining the RAF

[00:06:06] Steve W: Yes, what a special date the 6th of February turned out to be. Why did you choose the RAF?

[00:06:13] Sir Patrick: Well, initially I opted for the Navy, but was told very politely that very few people were taken into the Navy for National Service. So the RAF was the lesser of two evils. And I also at the back of my mind had this time when I remembered the combats of 1940, the Battle of Britain, because living in Chandler's Ford in 1940, the Battle of Britain was fought over the Southampton area. And... I'd seen many of these aerial combats over my head in those bright blue skies with contrails, the odd aircraft being shot down with a plume of smoke and so forth.  The Spitfire and the Hurricane became the legends of that particular battle. And at the back of my mind, I thought, well, if I could learn to fly during my two years in the RAF, this I would much enjoy, so that's what I opted to do.

(For the record: The Battle of Britain was fought over many parts of the South of England as well as Southampton.)

[00:07:08] Steve W: And the RAF.... was it what you were expecting when you first started?

[00:07:13] Sir Patrick: I suppose I didn't know what to expect really. The initial training, which was three months of studying various subjects, a lot of drill, a lot of physical training, a lot of kit inspections, all those sort of things, I found a little bit irksome. But I think by the end of the three months I'd got the message, I'd become much more disciplined. And of course as soon as I started the flying training then that was the great interest. And... certainly before the end of my National Service I had been bitten by the flying bug in the same way that earlier I'd been bitten by the golfing bug. And so I applied for a short service commission, which in those days was eight years. I got that and then the following year my squadron commander put me up for what was called a Permanent Commission which I also got that summer.  And so my two years turned in to forty-one.

The Gloster Meteor

[00:08:25] Steve W: Now, one of your early flying experiences was with the Gloster Meteor. Tell me a little bit about that.

[00:08:32] Sir Patrick: Right, well the Gloster Meteor was a twin engine jet aircraft. One of the first two jet aircraft in service with the RAF; the Meteor and the Vampire. And the earliest marks of Meteor were brought out in about 1944 - 45, and actually used to... chase doodlebugs.

Chris Phutully CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Tipping the doodlebugs

[00:08:53] Steve W:  The doodlebugs, or V-1 flying bombs, were first launched by Hitler's Wehrmacht in June 1944, one week after the allies successfully landed in France, primarily targeting London as a terror weapon, which they certainly proved to be. The Meteor was one of the early lines of defense against the doodlebug and would either shoot them down or come alongside and literally tip their wings so they'd crash into the sea.

[00:09:24] Sir Patrick: Well, it was the only thing that could catch them, you see, at that particular time. The Spitfire, the latest Mark of Spitfire, was just not fast enough.The top speed of a Meteor was around 600 miles an hour, so it was pretty fast. You could do up to Mark .83, so .83 the speed of sound, that sort of thing.

[00:09:46] Steve W: So to tip the wing of a doodlebug, you'd have to first find it...

[00:09:53] Sir Patrick: Yes...

[00:09:53] Steve W: ... catch it, come alongside...

[00:09:56] Sir Patrick: Exactly that. You would... guided onto it by radar until you were visual with it and then you came up from behind on one side, and by flying your aircraft underneath the wing of it, you didn't have to touch it, it didn't matter if you did provided you didn't touch it too hard, you could get a pressure of air and that would tilt it out of its guidance system.  So if you can imagine tilting the wing until you'd gone through 30 degrees, the nose would then begin to drop of the doodlebug and it would be down.

Extraordinary image of a V-1 flying bomb being wing-tipped by a spitfire - Walton, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

[00:10:30] Steve W: ...because they were actually fairly rudimentary weren't they?

[00:10:33] Sir Patrick: Yeah, they were rudimentary. It required some pretty accurate flying and a bit of care, but I would expect any operational pilot to be able to do that.

Central Flying School

[00:10:43] Steve W: After notching up over 2,000 hours of flying Meteors during a tour at Tangmere on Number 1 Squadron,  Paddy was transferred.

[00:10:53] Sir Patrick: I became a flying instructor at the Central Flying School and I was a member of the Central Flying School formation aerobatic team. They were called the Pelicans. If you were instructing as I was at a flying training school, then twice a year you were posted back to your original squadron to do some operational refresher training. And by the time I went back to 1 Squadron, they'd converted to the Hunter. So I was lucky in being converted to the Hunter on Number 1 Squadron and also lucky in that Central Flying School had three or four Hunters for people to get experience of a swept wing, single-engine, jet-flying, supersonic aircraft. First one the RAF had, the Hunter.

(For the record: The CFS had three Hawker Hunters)

(For the record: At the end of Paddy’s tour with Number 1 Squadron (1954), he went to the Central Flying School to train for six months as a Qualified Flying Instructor (QFI), after which he taught other pilots in Somerset and Lincolnshire. He then went back to Number 1 Squadron for compulsory 2-week refresher training, where he flew his first Hawker Hunter.  After this, he returned to the Central flying School on the staff (1956) and it was then that he flew in the Pelicans Display Team.)

[00:11:43] Steve W: They describe it as transonic

[00:11:46] Sir Patrick: Well it would be transonic level. It was only supersonic in a dive. So, if you turned your wing over, as we called it, and pointed the nose down, within oh... ten - fifteen seconds you could be supersonic.

The Black Arrows and 111 Squadron

[00:12:06] Steve W: In 1957, 111 Squadron had become the RAF's formation aerobatics team, soon to be named the legendary Black Arrows. Paddy knew about it, and he wanted to be in it.

[00:12:21] Sir Patrick: And I phoned up Squadron Leader Roger Topp, who was the leader of the team, and I said, "Could I come and have an interview with you because at some stage or other, I'd very much like to join the team"? So he said, "Yes, fly over to Biggin Hill", which I did in a Meteor. And we had a good chat, and he said, "I'd love to have you", but he said, "I haven't got a slot at the moment". So he said... "When I do, I'll get in touch". Well, I suppose it must have been about a month later, one of the squadron had to eject after a very bad landing and injured his back badly, so there was a slot. And I got the telephone call from Roger Topp to say, "Could you come and join us"? I said, "I hope so", and I persuaded my boss... at the Central Flying School to release me early from my tour there so I could go and join the team at North Weald.

(For the record: Paddy actually flew over to RAF North Weald.)

[00:13:13] Steve W: So 111 Squadron was purely an acrobatic team or was it operational as well?

[00:13:20] Sir Patrick: Well, it was both. It was an operational fighter squadron, and in those days, the RAF team was always provided by one of the frontline squadrons in Fighter Command. So what tended to happen during the four years 1957 to 1960, was that they would focus primarily on formation aerobatics from about March through to October and then, during the winter, everybody would revert to operational training.

Predecessors to the Black Arrows and the Diamond 9

[00:13:52] Steve W: And what came before the Black Arrows?

[00:13:55] Sir Patrick: The RAF had always had aerobatic teams going right back to the Hendon air displays of the 1920s. Immediately before 111 took over this role, as I say, in 1957, 43 Squadron at Leuchars in Scotland, the Fighting Cocks, they had provided the RAF team. But always with four aircraft, as far as I know. And the boss on 111, Roger Topp, he introduced the fifth aircraft very early on. And the advantage of a five-man team is that you can do many more shapes than you can with just a four-man team.

[00:14:34] Steve W: Once you've gone from four to five planes, why stop there?

[00:14:39] Sir Patrick: And it wasn't too long after that around the middle of 1957, when I'd only been on the squadron for about two months, that the boss decided we would do a diamond 9 aircraft display at Farnborough that year and for the Battle of Britain at home days. So I was, as a new boy, the number 6 in that team at Farnborough in 1957, that is the aircraft in the middle of the diamond. The diamond 9 was always the basic formation of the team thereafter and we would do different shapes with the nine and then several aircraft would break away, say four aircraft would break away, and we'd come back down to the normal five.... or we'd come down to seven and then to the five, during the course of the display.

Naming the Black Arrows

[00:15:24] Steve W: At this point, the nine-aircraft team didn't actually have a name, but that was about to change.

[00:15:32] Sir Patrick: The Paris Air Show that year, the French press, French media, dubbed us "Les Fleche Noires", the Black Arrows, and that's where the name came from and stuck because the aircraft was painted all black, it was not in the normal camouflage colouring at all. Black and gold were the squadron colours anyway, so we were adopting one of those. And against... a blue sky the black stood out very starkly. It was a good colour.

[00:16:01] Steve W: And what did a typical week look like during the aerobatic season?

[00:16:05] Sir Patrick: You started to work up for the new season in March and April and there were a lot of displays. I suppose between April and the first part of October, we'd give about 80 to 85 displays, about half of them, perhaps more, in this country and the remainder throughout Europe. So at the weekend we'd often fly out to, it could be Germany, it could be Norway, it could be Spain or Italy, and... we would spend the weekend out giving our displays. And then, having given the display, we were usually entertained to a very good dinner, wherever it was. And then on the Monday we would fly back, probably a bit worse for wear, but with some duty free stuck in the aircraft somewhere and... go back home, resume normal family life, and... get on with our training for the next weekend's displays.

Typical Black Arrows training session

[00:17:07] Steve W: Do you remember, perhaps when you were younger, trying to learn to juggle. You'd start by throwing two balls in the air from one hand to the other. And if you hadn't lost interest by then, you might have added a third or fourth or even a fifth. Well, it's a bit like that when you're learning to fly in formation.

[00:17:28] Sir Patrick: You would start up by being two in a pair. So you'd have somebody leading the pair who was an experienced formation aerobatic pilot. The number two, the trainee, would sit on his wing and... you'd do steeper climbs, wing overs to the left or wing overs to the right and gradually work up into doing a loop. And then you'd practice a number of loops and then you'd do a barrel roll and it was literally like flying around a barrel. And so you'd work the guy up in several sorties, just flying number two. And then he would become one of three and eventually one of four. So you're gradually working up and giving him experience and you're then following the whole sequence that the boss would pursue. So you have a sequence of say, 12 minutes, 15 minutes at the outside of presenting loops, barrel rolls, changing formation in front of the crowd. A 'display sequence' it was called.

Challenges of flying with Black Arrows

[00:18:32] Sir Patrick: So thinking about, for instance, the standard diamond 9 formation: What were the particular challenges of flying in a formation like that?

Every single pilot going through training, fighter pilot, is going to be taught how to fly in formation.  So that's a given long before any fighter pilot becomes operational on a front-line squadron. So the basics are all there. It's retaining formation in manoeuvres, quite sharp manoeuvres, and manoeuvres like loops or rolls and this sort of thing that is the big difference, and there's a slight psychological hurdle there for someone to overcome. But flying formation you need small movements, both on the throttle, to keep four and aft position, and both on the control column to maintain the same plane and so forth. It's smooth, just smooth. And the best formation now, perhaps, are the smoothest ones, who do that, not making too many small adjustments.

(For the record: Paddy would have preferred to say “And the best formation pilots are the smoothest ones, those not making too many small adjustments.)

[00:19:34] Steve W: And what about from the aeronautical engineering aspect in terms of flying close together, with air flow and so on...

[00:19:43] Sir Patrick: If you get too close you're disturbing the flow pattern around the wingtip or trailing edge of the other person's wing. We flew overlapped like that by about three feet between wingtips, but we did that by being stepped down very slightly. About three feet, three-four feet below the other chap you were formating on. Whenever we were flying in the five, that was the only time we did that. That was a very close formation. If we were flying in a nine, we were tips brushing, just clear of tips brushing. But you're quite right, if you're flying very close, there is a disturbance between the two wings. And the only way you can... compensate for that is by saying, "Dropping down", what we call, 'plane low'.

[00:20:29] Steve W: And when you say three feet, you literally mean three feet.

[00:20:32] Sir Patrick: Oh yes, yes, yeah. I mean it sounds very little, but bear in mind that it doesn't matter whether you're flying at 150 knots or 450 knots. Speed is relative. You and the aircraft you're formating on are moving at precisely the same speed. So as speed changes, your formation flying doesn't change at all. In many ways, the faster the speed, the better it is, because the more sensitive the controls are, and so forth.  

[00:21:04] Steve W: And presumably depending on where you sit in the formation, your job can look quite different?

[00:21:10] Sir Patrick: The larger the formation, those flying on the outside of it, particularly when you're doing rolling plane manoeuvres, they have to have major throttle changes. If you can imagine pulling up straight then level and then you begin to do your barrel roll to the left, the chap on the outside is a bigger roll than the boss because he was going round the outside the barrel as opposed to the centre of it. So he's having to make throttle adjustments initially during the first part quite a lot of throttle on to maintain station, and then as you're coming out of the roll, quite a lot of throttle off.   So the core of the formation needs to be very steady, which gives the people on the outside, the extremities of the formation, a much easier ride. You might say, "Oh, we should put our very best pilots on the outside of the formation" in that case. No. You put your most experienced, smooth pilots in the core of the formation, because that makes life much easier for those out on the extremities.

Planning for Black Arrows' world record plane loop attempt

[00:22:17] Steve W: Now the leader, Roger Topp was ambitious for his team and for him, the diamond 9 was just the starting point of that ambition. The 1958 Farnborough Air Show was looming. The Pakistani Air Force Display Team had attempted, not totally successfully, a 16-plane loop in their Sabre aircraft. So Roger Topp and his Hunters would have to go further.

[00:22:49] Sir Patrick: We had to do more than 16. 16 was a good number incidentally, because you have a bigger diamond. You add another seven, you have a diamond shape again. And he fastened on to the idea of having twenty. And the idea was that you had a frontage of five aircraft in arrow, and in behind there were three aircraft in each stem, in-line astern, which made the twenty. We didn't have twenty pilots on the squadron, who were formation aerobatic capable. So he had to convince the Commander-in-Chief of Fighter Command that we needed more aircraft... we needed another ten aircraft and we needed another ten pilots. So in came these extra aircraft and in came the extra pilots, who we had to work up slowly into this shape of 20 that I've described. So, having got them all experienced, we went up and we did several rehearsals. And it worked fine, probably about two times out of three. But the third occasion, the people on the outside at the back, because they were so far away from the boss, and doing a bigger, looping manoeuver, were being stretched, in other words, dropping back slightly, and not maintaining formation.

[00:24:04] Steve W: Two times out of three isn't good enough for the world's leading formation team. So a solution was needed. And a solution was found.

[00:24:14] Sir Patrick: ...which was increasing the frontage from five to seven and putting only two aircraft in each of the stems, which gave you 21. But, you could put a fourth aircraft in the boss's stem because he's, you know, he's the smoothest one of the lot, if you like, so there'd be no problem doing that. So that's how we got the basic 22. And we went up the next day and we tried it and it worked a dream. We tried it several times, it worked. So that's how we settled on the 22. But it was interesting going from the 20 to the 22, the 22 was feasible, whereas the 20 wasn't.

Black Arrows show time

[00:24:50] Steve W: At last it's the first day of the Farnborough Air Show 1958 and the day of the public world record loop attempt by 22 Hawker Hunters, the Black Arrows. The morning had gone to plan and it was now time to head out to the tarmac.

[00:25:15] Sir Patrick: And then you all walk out together. Walk around the aircraft, do the pre-flight inspection and then climb into the cockpit, strap in, parachute, harness, everything else, helmet on, plug in. And... the boss tells you when you're going to start up. You know exactly when your RT must be up and listening to him. You all start up at the same time, you check in right through the formation to make sure everybody is serviceable before we move off the chocks. And... then if everything's going well, off you go.  Twenty two aircraft plus two airborne spares, which we had in case somebody went U.S. having got airborne.

[00:25:59] Steve W: And off they went, four at a time. And after orbiting RAF Odiham while the remaining planes joined the formation, they left the airfield behind in the direction of Farnborough. About three miles out, they entered a shallow dive to reach the correct height for the approach, the rear most aircraft only 50 feet off the ground.

Black Arrows break world record

[00:26:31] Sir Patrick: So you'll start your run in, normally from the west down the main runway at Farnborough and into your sequence. At the end there's a double 22 loop...

[00:26:48] Steve W: A double 22 loop, the double 22 loop. Paddy relayed the event in typical understated manner. Business as usual. But it wasn't business as usual. The world was witnessing an aerobatic manoeuver that had never been seen before on such a scale. Roger Topp later talked about that moment: zooming upwards as air speed fell; full concentration; consistent pressure on the throttle to ensure a clean and even arc was drawn. He recalls the moment when 22 Hawker Hunters stood vertically on their tails. What a sight that must have been. Then the top of the loop, the slowest point of the manoeuver. The moment with the least throttle control. Steady now, steady. Each plane in turn tops the hill and they're hurtling back down towards the runway. And as they pass the euphoric crowd...

[00:27:58] Sir Patrick: ...straight into the second loop. So it was like looking at a pair of glasses, if you like, from their point of view, before you disappear right. Six aircraft peeled off at that stage, coming down from 22 to 16. The boss would do a wing over, do a high wing and come back, do the barrel roll with 16 aircraft, shed another seven, come in to the diamond 9, do several manoeuvres in the diamond 9 and the final few manoeuvres with a five.

[00:28:25] Steve W: And that was it; a glorious world record 22-plane loop by the Black Arrows. A record which still holds to this day and certainly looks to have little chance of being beaten anytime soon.

[00:28:46] Sir Patrick: We were very pleased when the sequence had gone well and it was over and we were back on the ground and so forth. A great feeling when you know you've done the job well, as with anything in life. And then back on the ground, debrief, go off to the bar, have a pint and enjoy the day.

Aftermath

[00:29:02] Steve W: Paddy remained with the team the following year and after one more season in 1960, 111 Squadron handed over the baton of being the RAF's flagship aerobatic display team to 92 Squadron and the Blue Diamonds. And their successors, the Red Arrows are still thrilling the crowds to this day, though with a few less planes.

[00:29:28] Sir Patrick: I think people always love air displays and to see a team like the Red Arrows perform, wherever it is, Bournemouth Festival or Farnborough or somewhere else around the world is always exciting, and there'll always be people. How else do the general public see anything that the Royal Air Force does? Very, very few are exposed to how they do it day to day looking after our defence interests.

[00:29:55] Steve W: For Paddy, the end of the Black Arrows marked just the beginning of the rest of his extraordinary RAF career. He moved on to become squadron leader in 92 Squadron and continued a meteoric rise to the RAF's top post - Air Chief Marshal, a role that led to the responsibility as joint command of the British forces during the Gulf War in 1990. In 1991, Paddy retired from the RAF, spent some time as military advisor to British Aerospace, but there was still time for one more particular honour...

The Royal & Ancient Golf Club

[00:30:35] Sir Patrick: By 1995, an ex-RAF friend of mine had put me up for membership to the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews. And, it was 15 years after I'd joined, out of the blue came this letter in mid-December.   "Dear Paddy, the past captains of the Royal & Ancient Golf Club have met to decide who should be our captain next year and we'd be very honoured if you'd agree to become the captain". I said to Jill, "This is a wind up. You know, one of my friends having a real go at a wind up". Anyway, I turned it over and it was signed off by a chap called John Uzielli, who I knew very well. So I made a few inquiries, and yes, it was a bona fide letter.

[00:31:25] Steve W: So you became captain of the Royal & Ancient Golf Club for that year, 2010-11 I believe. Just clarify for me the role of the R&A.

[00:31:40] Sir Patrick: The two organizations, the USGA and the... R&A, they run golf worldwide and they're very close together. So in representing the R&A, yes I was representing the club, but primarily the R&A and its position of being one of those who runs the game of golf around the world.

[00:32:00] Steve W: And did your golf manage to improve through that period?

[00:32:05] Sir Patrick: Well, I was at my best at 18. I spent the last 75 odd years getting slowly worse. And now getting much worse, quickly.

Reflections of the RAF today

[00:32:18] Steve W: And with your Air Chief Marshal hat on, when you look at the RAF today versus say the 1990's RAF when you stepped down, what do you see?

[00:32:31] Sir Patrick: I see a service which is about one third the size, which in terms of facing any major threat to our security in Europe is far too small. I mean we have, I think, something like seven or eight front-line fighter attack squadrons whereas when I retired in 1991 we had 28. So, they're highly professional, what they do they do very well, as far as I can see. But it's a veneer. It's a shop window air force. It is not one designed for serious fighting. But that's not just true of the RAF. It's true of all our armed forces, I'm afraid. Politicians who have to get themselves re-elected every five years are not keen to spend any more on defense than they absolutely need. And, incidentally, whereas threats can change overnight, serious military capability cannot. To reconstitute for the Air Force, for example, to where we really need to be, would take you 10, 15 years. Nowadays it takes up to seven years to train a front-line fighter pilot.  By comparison, I was on a frontline squadron within 19 months of having joined the RAF.

Black Arrows forever

[00:33:51] Steve W: And finally just returning to the Black Arrows. Where does that achievement rank in terms of your career accomplishments?

[00:34:00] Sir Patrick: I think you have to say it was one of the highlights in terms of my flying career. It stands out as something exceptional, in terms of the people that I was flying with, the challenges we were posed and how we met them, the rapport between the pilots and the ground crew. The fact that we had a very active, close social life as a team, it's like any good team, you need an esprit de corps, and we had that in spades.   So, I will always look back on those three years with great affection and with most fond memories, which will stay with me to my dying day.

Unless otherwise stated, all images and video footage below is provided courtesy of Ian Stark at VIT Media, check out classicmachinefilms.