Twenty-two jet fighters climbed over Farnborough until they hung, all together, with their noses pointing at the sky. Then they went over the top and down the other side, still locked in formation, and did it again.

That was the Black Arrows of No. 111 Squadron, Royal Air Force, at the Society of British Aircraft Constructors' show in September 1958. Their 22-aircraft loop of Hawker Hunter fighters set a world record for the greatest number of aircraft looped in formation. More than six decades later, it has still not been beaten.

It was not a stunt dreamed up by a public relations office. It was the work of an ambitious squadron commander and of young pilots who practised until they could fly wingtip to wingtip through a vertical circle in a 1950s fighter.

Treble One and Its Commander

No. 111 Squadron, known throughout the RAF as Treble One, was reformed at RAF North Weald on 2 December 1953 with Gloster Meteor F.8s. In 1955 the Meteors gave way to the Hawker Hunter F.4, and by the end of 1956 the squadron was flying the Hunter F.6, powered by the Rolls-Royce Avon 203 of about 10,000 lbf thrust.

The Hunter itself had entered RAF service in 1954 as a manoeuvrable single-seat day interceptor, quickly replacing first-generation jets such as the Meteor and the de Havilland Venom. Swept, clean and responsive, it was exactly the kind of fighter a formation team could push hard, and two RAF display teams would make their names on it.

Squadron Leader Roger Topp formed the Black Arrows in 1956 while he commanded the squadron. Before Treble One took on the job, the RAF's official team had come from No. 43 Squadron, the Fighting Cocks at Leuchars, flying four aircraft. Paddy Hine, who joined the team as a young pilot, recalled that Topp added a fifth jet very early on, which opened up far more formation shapes than a four-ship could manage.

The squadron's Hunters were painted black. In June 1958 Treble One and its black jets moved from North Weald to RAF Wattisham in Suffolk as the Fighter Command aerobatic team of the Royal Air Force.

From Nine to Twenty-Two

By the middle of 1957 Topp had decided the team would fly a diamond nine at Farnborough. Hine, only about two months on the squadron, flew as number six, the aircraft in the middle of the diamond. From then on the diamond nine was the team's basic shape, splitting and rejoining through the display.

For 1958 Topp wanted something far bigger. In February 1958 the Pakistan Air Force's Falcons team had looped 16 F-86 Sabres, a feat Wikipedia records as the previous world record. Treble One would have to go beyond that.

vIT Media's two-hour documentary on Roger Topp, Paddy Hine and the pilots and ground crew of 111 Squadron.

Topp's first idea was twenty Hunters: a front rank of five in arrowhead, with three aircraft in line astern behind each. The squadron did not have twenty formation-aerobatic pilots, so he had to persuade the Commander-in-Chief of Fighter Command to provide extra aircraft. The twenty would not work in the air.

The fix was to widen the front rank from five aircraft to seven and put only two in each stem, giving 21, then tuck a fourth aircraft into the leader's own stem. That made 22. As Hine told it, the very next day they tried the new shape, and it worked first time and every time after.

Over Farnborough

Guinness World Records dates the record loop, flown in front of spectators, to 4 September 1958; Hine remembered it as the first day of the show. The Hunters took off four at a time. In Batting the Breeze's telling, they orbited RAF Odiham while the formation assembled, then headed for Farnborough. About three miles out they entered a shallow dive to reach the right height for the run-in, with the rearmost aircraft only 50 feet off the ground.

They ran in from the west, down the main runway, and pulled up. As Batting the Breeze recounts it, Topp later described the climb as a matter of total concentration and steady throttle, drawing a clean, even arc as the airspeed bled away, until all 22 Hunters were standing vertically on their tails. Over the top they came, down the back of the loop and straight into a second one.

Six aircraft then peeled away, leaving 16. Topp flew a wingover, brought the formation back and led a barrel roll with all 16 Hunters, another feat no team had shown before, according to the Black Arrows' Wikipedia history. Seven more broke off for the diamond nine, and the last manoeuvres were flown by five.

Why the Record Still Stands

Looping a big formation is brutally hard because each jet is flying a different-sized circle. The aircraft on the outside of a turn or roll must cover more distance than the leader at its centre, so their pilots are constantly juggling power to hold position, adding throttle on the way in and taking it off on the way out. Multiply that by 22 swept-wing fighters with 1950s engines and no fly-by-wire, and the margin for error becomes tiny.

Hine described how new pilots were built up to it. A trainee started as number two to an experienced formation pilot, flying steeper climbs and wingovers, then loops, then barrel rolls, over several sorties. Only then did he become one of three, then one of four, and finally a slot in the big formation. The best formation pilots, in his view, were the smoothest ones, making the fewest small corrections.

Today's national display teams fly far smaller formations, and gathering two dozen fast jets and trained formation pilots for a single manoeuvre would be a huge undertaking. Wattisham Station Heritage, which still displays Topp's own aircraft, Hunter F.6 XG194, says the 1958 record still stands.

The Farnborough show in those years ran for seven days in a row, and Batting the Breeze reports that the team performed its 22-plane loop twice in front of a euphoric crowd.

British Pathé newsreel from the 1958 Farnborough show, including an RAF aerobatic team passing in formation.

After the Loop

Topp handed the team to Squadron Leader Peter Latham in late 1958, and Latham led the Black Arrows until 1960. Until 1961 they remained the RAF's premier aerobatic team. In April 1961 Treble One received its first English Electric Lightning, and the squadron's Hunter years came to an end.

Other squadron teams followed: the Blue Diamonds of No. 92 Squadron, also on Hunters, the Tigers of No. 74 Squadron on Lightnings, the Red Pelicans on Jet Provosts and the Yellowjacks on Gnats. The RAF eventually replaced them all with a single, dedicated team, the Red Arrows, formed in late 1964.

Avialogs archive film on the Black Arrows, the Hunter team that came before the Red Arrows.

Paddy Hine went on to become an Air Chief Marshal and joint commander of British forces in the 1990 Gulf War, yet still counted that 1958 season among his proudest moments. Roger Topp, the man who started it all, retired as an Air Commodore and died in 2020.

Their record is still there, written in a single formation over a Hampshire airfield. Twenty-two Hunters, one loop, and nobody has looped more jets together since.

Sources: Wikipedia (Black Arrows, No. 111 Squadron RAF, Hawker Hunter, Peter Latham, Patrick Hine, Red Arrows), Batting the Breeze podcast, Wattisham Station Heritage, British Pathé, vIT Media