The Red Arrows are the Royal Air Force’s official aerobatic team, made up of RAF pilots and support personnel, with its pilots posted to the unit for a fixed period before moving on to other RAF appointments. The history of the Red Arrows runs from a handful of separate post-war display squadrons to today’s mix of aerobatic flying, defence diplomacy and public engagement, and it tracks closely with the aircraft the team has flown: first the Folland Gnat, then the BAE Hawk, and now a future replacement aircraft that has yet to be selected.
Several dates in that history are often blurred together. The year the team was formed is not the year of its first display, and the “debut” quoted in some accounts was a press event rather than the team’s first performance in front of a public audience.
How the Red Arrows Began
Through the 1950s, several RAF squadrons ran their own display teams rather than the service fielding one national team. No. 111 Squadron’s Black Arrows, flying black Hawker Hunters, became the best known of these, setting a world record with a loop performed by 22 aircraft in formation; six then broke away, and the remaining 16 aircraft performed a barrel roll. From 1961, No. 92 Squadron’s Blue Diamonds took on the role with 16 blue Hunters.
Squadron-based teams brought prestige to individual units and aircraft types, but they also meant the RAF’s public display effort could change from year to year as squadrons re-equipped or were disbanded. By 1964, the RAF wanted a single team to represent the whole service on a lasting basis, building on the heritage of existing squadron and training-unit teams, among them the Red Pelicans, an established Jet Provost display team, and the Yellowjacks, a Folland Gnat aerobatic team from No. 4 Flying Training School at RAF Valley.
The RAF’s Central Flying School drew on this predecessor heritage, including the Yellowjacks’ yellow Gnats and their pilots, in forming the Red Arrows in late 1964. The new team flew its first season in 1965 with seven Gnats.
The First Displays and the Gnat Years
The Red Arrows’ first official display was flown for the press at RAF Little Rissington on 6 May 1965. Their first public performance followed on 9 May, at the French Air Force base at Clermont-Ferrand, and their first UK public show came on 15 May at the Biggin Hill International Air Fair in Kent. In that first season the team flew 65 displays across Britain and Europe and was awarded the Britannia Trophy.
The compact, agile Gnat suited close-formation aerobatics and gave the team its early visual identity: tight, disciplined flying rather than size or firepower. In 1968, under Squadron Leader Ray Hanna, the team expanded from seven to nine aircraft, introducing the “Diamond Nine” formation that became the Red Arrows’ signature shape for decades.
From Gnat to Hawk T1
The Hawk had already entered RAF service in 1976 as the service’s new advanced jet trainer. The Red Arrows began flying the Hawk in the late 1970s and flew their first full display season with the aircraft in 1980, replacing the Gnat after fifteen years. Because the Hawk was also the RAF’s standard trainer, the switch tied the team’s display aircraft directly to the wider pilot-training system rather than to a bespoke display type.
The team’s aircraft, the BAE Hawk T1, is a modified version of the standard trainer, fitted with a smoke-generation system and a slightly uprated engine to improve its response in close formation, as described on the RAF’s Hawk T1 page. It is a different airframe from the Hawk T2 used for general advanced flying training today, though both trace back to the same basic design. The Hawk’s red livery and coloured smoke trails became, over the following decades, the most recognisable public image of the Red Arrows.
Pilots, Engineers and Preparing for the Season
Red Arrows pilots are experienced RAF officers rather than specialists recruited from outside the service. Candidates need at least 1,500 flying hours, a completed operational tour and an above-average flying assessment before they can even apply. Up to three new pilots join each year, chosen through a flying test, a formal interview, a media test and assessment by their future teammates. Most serve around three years with the team before returning to other RAF flying duties, which keeps the Red Arrows closely connected to front-line squadrons rather than becoming a separate career path.
The display pilots depend on a much larger team of engineers and support staff, numbering around 120 and known within the RAF as “the Blues” for the blue flying suits they wear during the display season. Mechanical technicians, covering engines, hydraulics, flight controls and airframe structure, make up around two-thirds of that engineering group, working alongside a smaller avionics team responsible for electrical and instrument systems and weapons technicians who maintain the ejection seats.
Logistics staff keep spare parts moving, transport drivers run the road convoy that supports each away display, and two dedicated “dye teams” manage the coloured smoke system. Several Blues also travel as photographers, recording each display and providing safety footage. A full season of aerobatic flying depends on that engineering and logistics effort as much as it depends on the team’s display pilots.
Before performing in public each year, the team also completes a period of winter training and must be awarded Public Display Authority, confirming that pilots and formation are fit to fly before the display season begins.
Representing the RAF at Home and Abroad
Beyond the flying itself, the Red Arrows have long served the RAF’s recruitment effort and its wider defence diplomacy, appearing at events in Britain and overseas on the government’s behalf. One clear example came in 2019, when the team undertook an extensive tour of Canada and the United States, its first full North American tour since 2008. Government ministers framed the tour as part of supporting the wider UK-US and UK-Canada relationship, including trade and investment ties the RAF’s own Air & Space Power 2020 publication put at more than £208 billion in 2018.
RAF Waddington and the Current Display Format
The Red Arrows spent decades based at RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire, but the station’s closure was announced in 2018 as part of the Ministry of Defence’s Defence Estate Optimisation Portfolio. An operational safety assessment identified RAF Waddington, also in Lincolnshire, as the only suitable alternative, and the team relocated there ahead of Scampton’s closure in late 2022, keeping the Red Arrows in the same county even as their home station changed.
The team’s display format has also been adjusted over time. In 2026, the Red Arrows fly aerobatic displays with seven aircraft, Reds 1 to 7, split into a front section and a rear section that includes the Synchro Pair’s opposition manoeuvres. For selected flypasts, including national and state occasions, two further aircraft, Reds 8 and 9, join to form a nine-aircraft formation. This 2026 format is distinct from the historical introduction of the nine-ship Diamond Nine in 1968, which was the team’s standard display formation for a different era of its history.
What Comes After the Hawk?
The Hawk T1 fleet has now been in Red Arrows service for more than four decades, and the Ministry of Defence has begun the process of selecting its successor as part of the wider recapitalisation of the RAF’s Jet Training System.
The 2026 Defence Investment Plan allocated £360 million to the wider Jet Training System programme, including new aircraft for the Red Arrows. A written parliamentary answer on 8 July 2026 confirmed that the funding covered the wider training system rather than a standalone Red Arrows aircraft purchase, with the detailed requirement, delivery approach and procurement strategy still being developed.
A further parliamentary answer on 8 September 2026 confirmed that a Request for Information had been published on 6 August as part of the programme and that market engagement with industry was continuing. The Ministry of Defence had not selected the aircraft that would replace the Hawk T1 or announced a firm date for its introduction.
The Red Arrows’ Place in RAF History
The Red Arrows sit at the point where service flying skill becomes public performance. Every pilot who flies with them has come from front-line operational service, and every engineer supporting them belongs to the RAF’s ordinary trades, so the team’s peacetime role rests on ordinary service experience rather than a separate specialism built up outside it.
From the scattered squadron display teams of the 1950s, through the Yellowjacks’ five Gnats and the Diamond Nine of 1968, to the Hawk era and the current search for its replacement, the team’s history has run alongside the RAF’s own training and equipment decisions at every stage. That continuity has kept the Red Arrows a fixture of RAF public life for six decades, alongside the smoke trails and red livery the public knows best.