RIAT Marks 50th Anniversary With Scaled-Down Event

The Royal International Air Tattoo (RIAT) has marked its 50th anniversary by returning to where the first show was held - North Weald Airfield in Essex. 

July's full-scale RIAT event has been cancelled for the second year running due to COVID-19, but the team behind the biggest military air show in the world pressed on with scaled-down anniversary celebrations.

The commemorations for the anniversary on Monday in Essex were also impacted.

A Battle of Britain Memorial Flight Spitfire ran into technical difficulties and was unable to attend, while another of the three planned aircraft hit cloud and had to turn back – as the UK hit the warmest spell in 2021 so far.

Taking centre stage was a single, civilian aircraft that had taken part in the first-ever RIAT show in North Weald.

The event gave RIAT founding member Tim Prince a chance to reflect on how far the show has come.

"Actually coming here and realising what we were taking on, actually not knowing what we were doing necessarily, it's a very powerful emotion," he said.

"It’s become a NATO meeting place for the air."

In normal times, thousands would flock to RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire, where the show eventually moved.

International forces and industry partners have put on a display for the public at RIAT since 1971 but last year's event was moved online due to the pandemic.

RIAT CEO Paul Atherton said: "We were hoping to celebrate the 50th anniversary of RIAT this July at Fairford, and it would have been the biggest and the best that we would have done to date.

"Clearly, that's not been possible, we've had to cancel the second consecutive year because of COVID, but we just felt we couldn't let this significant milestone go by without anything."

Mr Atherton described the single-plane event as "humbling", but joined Mr Prince in looking ahead to 2022.

Current plans for next summer feature a full-scale return to the US base RAF Fairford, with a focus on the US Air Force as it turns 75.