Hawk 2003 - 2008 (1)

On 1 April 2004 the engineering support contract changed from BRAMA (1), the original contractor, to Babcocks with the changeover taking place on 01 April. However, there was a smooth transition with no interruption to any of the flying activities. The Squadron saw little change and they continued to enjoy excellent support from the engineering staff.

On the wider front, the RAF Front Line struggled to absorb the large numbers of pilots that were produced through RAF Valley. In effect RAF Valley had overfilled the training pipeline and to avoid excessive delays in training student numbers the task was reduced by approximately 45%. Although this was a significant change other factors affected the overall tasking; the Squadron had more refresher training flying to do as they took over the Senior Officer refresher training courses that were previously run at BAE Systems, Warton. The biggest tasking change, however, was the announcement of the arrival of Indian Air Force (IAF) trainee pilots for fast-jet training at RAF Valley. The contract for India to buy the new Hawk was signed in March 2004 and, as part of the deal, up to 75 IAF pilots were to be trained over the subsequent 3 years.

In early 2004, the 6-part television Series ‘Combat Pilot’ was aired on BBC2 (2), giving a detailed insight into the Squadron’s activities in 2002 as the documentary team followed the progress of one of the student courses as it progressed through training on 208 and 19 Squadrons. At the end of March 2004 Wg Cdr Clifford spent 5 days in Delhi visiting the IAF Training Headquarters with a team from BAE Systems to provide advice on the detail of the training package that was planned for the IAF pilots.

In the thirteen months from May 2004 to May 2005 the squadron flew just under 10,000 sorties and just over 10,000 hours. They trained over 180 pilots on a wide range of courses, from basic Hawk flying, through Indian Air Force (IAF) training to conversion for the Red Arrows.

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