I am not disdainful of the pilots involved - my comments refer to the hoops that have to be jumped through nowadays to authorise such a formation - all military authorisers are told the same horror stories about formation flying and how often it features in accidents - hence my comment about who signed this off.
There was no operational imperative, which is usually a way of circumventing the rigid rules and such a
PR stunt would have had to have been signed off by at least Gp Capt/Colonel.
BTW - there wasn't a Wallop 'incident' - just a hundred or so helicopters at half a rotor span distance in line abreast making a downwind approach to the hover - it happened every couple of years at the airshow - I did 3 of those, 2 in a Gazelle and 1 in a Lynx - all very exciting
