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The Royal Air Force will help celebrate Her Majesty The Queen’s Birthday with a flypast over Buckingham Palace at 1.00 pm on Saturday 11th June 2011. The flypast will be made up of 25 aircraft – 11 different types, from the World War ll Spitfire, Hurricane and Lancaster, to modern multi-role Typhoon fighters and the Red Arrows aerobatic display team. A Chinook and two Puma helicopters will lead the formation representing Joint Helicopter Command and the role of helicopters on Operations. It is the 70th year of the Air Training Corps and as part of celebrations, 70 cadets will be onboard Hercules, Chinook and HS125 aircraft.
The formation elements will fly over Buckingham Palace at altitudes of between 1,000 feet and 1,500 feet starting at 1.00 pm precisely. The flypast will take four minutes to fly over the Palace. Should the Trooping the Colour ceremony be delayed by weather, the flypast will also be delayed until 5.00 pm that day. All aircraft participation is subject to weather conditions and serviceability on the day.
From 12.00 pm on Saturday the aircraft will be visible over the North Sea near Southwold on the Suffolk coast before routing to The Mall and onward to Buckingham Palace, after taking off from 7 different RAF bases across the UK. The aircraft will then head across Suffolk to Colchester, and at Fairlop the WWll aircraft of the BBMF will join the formation to lead the stream of fixed-wing aircraft over East London as they head towards The Mall.
The different speeds of the aircraft involved require careful planning. With a 60 second lead the Chinook and Pumas will be flying at 120 knots followed by BBMF and the Hercules formation travelling at 150-170 Knots, the main elements will be spaced a further 60 seconds behind and will travel at approximately 270 knots followed then by the Red Arrows flying at 360 knots; both height and lateral spacing has been carefully calculated in the planning stages to ensure safe separation throughout the flypast.
Following the flypast over Buckingham Palace the BBMF will depart for the RAF Museum at Hendon whilst the rest of the formation will continue on passing RAF Northolt, Middlesex which will be holding their annual Station Families Day. Before dispersing back to their home bases they will also fly over RAF Halton, Buckinghamshire where they will be holding an RAF at Home Day, an event which will include both airside and groundside displays giving the local community an opportunity to view the many Units that operate there.
The key factor when deciding aircraft involvement was ensuring that it will have no effect on operations around the world. The flypast is made up of 7 elements:
First element is to be one Chinook and two Puma helicopters provided by Joint Helicopter Command from RAF Odiham and RAF Benson.
Second element is to be the RAF Battle of Britain Memorial Flight; consisting of a Lancaster, a Spitfire and a Hurricane provided by RAF Coningsby.
Third element is to be two C130 aircraft provided by RAF Lyneham escorted by two King Air provided by RAF Cranwell.
Fourth element is to be two Typhoon provided by RAF Leuchars and two Tornado GR4 provided by RAF Marham.
Fifth element is to be two HS-125 provided by RAF Northolt
Sixth element is to be nine RAFAT Hawks provided by RAF Scampton.
Source and image: RAF/UK MOD
