6 Squadron Typhoons, from RAF Lossiemouth, are taking part in the world’s largest and most complex air combat exercise at Nellis Air Force Base in the United States.

Red Flag is a three-week exercise that pits friendly ‘Blue’ forces – including the 6 Squadron Typhoons – against hostile ‘Red Force’ aggressors in live and synthetic training environments, simulating air-to-air and air-to-ground combat, and space and cyber warfare.

The training mirrors the threats and complex air defences posed by real-life adversaries, helps participating nations better understand each other’s capabilities and ensures that RAF personnel maintain the highest levels of readiness for potential future military operations.

The live element takes place over the US Air Force’s premier military training area in Nevada; over 15,000 square miles of airspace and 2.9 million acres of land – an impossible scale to achieve in Europe.

The exercise also sees the Typhoons fly alongside US Air Force F-22 Raptors and F-35A Lightnings. This continues the evolving integration of RAF operations with 5th Generation aircraft ahead of the introduction of the F-35B into the RAF’s combat air inventory in 2018.

Wing Commander Billy Cooper, Officer Commanding 6 Squadron, said: “We’ve brought eight Typhoons with us from RAF Lossiemouth to take part in Red Flag alongside the United States Air Force and Royal Australian Air Force.

“While our day job at Lossiemouth is protecting UK airspace through Quick Reaction Alert, here in Nevada the majority of what we’re doing is air-to-air fighting and some strike missions. This means we’ll be flying two waves of six aircraft every day.

“One of the benefits of this exercise is the threat replication; we can simulate fighting our way into a target area through a high-threat environment, dropping precision munitions on specific targets and then fighting our way back out again. It’s a privilege to deploy here with 6 Squadron and to represent the Royal Air Force, the UK and Scotland in particular.”

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Former WAAF Patricia Clark, a Battle of Britain filter room plotter, who became a bestselling novelist, has died aged 95.

Born Patricia Robins on February 1, 1921, she was the second of three daughter of novelist Denise Robins, known as ‘the Queen of Romance’. After going to school in Switzerland, where she learned French and how to ski, Patricia wanted to learn German and was sent, aged 16, in 1937 to study near Munich. She once found herself in a traffic jam a few feet away from Hitler who was in an open topped car. Nearly 80 years later she vividly remembered ‘meeting Hitler’s cold blue eyes.’

Returning to England she found a job on Women’s Illustrated magazine as a junior editor. As war loomed, she joined the RAF and after basic training was assigned to special duties, in the Filter Centre at 10 (Fighter) Group. Her job as a filterer was important, skilled work. The Filter Centre was a high pressure environment that demanded a great degree of skill and dexterity and close team cooperation.

Patricia proved to be a highly capable operator who was commissioned and made a Filterer. The Filterer’s job was to analyse the huge amount of conflicting information to decide on the most accurate position, vector, height and strength of detected aircraft in a very short time. She was further promoted to Filter Officer, acting as deputy to the Filter Centre Controller and with overall responsibility for all the filtered information which produced the recognised air picture.

In 1944 Britain was the first nation ever attacked by ballistic missiles and Patricia took part in the pioneering work designed to locate the firing positions of V2 rockets so they could be attacked from the air. Her work was highly classified and she was sworn to secrecy about it for 30 years after the war ended. During breaks for bad weather in this top-secret war work, Patricia started writing romance stories for magazines, using the extra income she made from them as petrol money to get to NAAFI dances.

In1947, she met and married former RAF pilot Donald Clark. They divorced in 1976. Her writing career began in earnest after the war and, like her mother; Patricia became a prolific author of light romantic fiction. In the 1970s she started to write blockbuster historical romances using the pen name Claire Lorrimer. In later years she moved to new genres, including murder mysteries. In March last year, under her pen name, she was presented with an Outstanding Achievement Award by the Romantic Novelists’ Association, after completing her 80th novel.

She is survived by her three children, eight grandchildren and one great grandchild.

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RAF trainers are celebrating being recognised as one of the top 100 employers of apprentices in Britain.

The Service, which currently has 2,700 personnel on its programmes, has provided apprenticeships since its creation in 1918 and in 2014 its scheme was graded ‘outstanding,’ in all areas by the education standards watch dog Ofsted.

Now the RAF has been included on the prestigious Top 100 Apprenticeship Employers list compiled annually by the National Apprenticeship Service.

Group Captain Stephen Dharamraj, Commandant of the Royal Air Force Central Training School, said: “Apprenticeships are an integral part of our training philosophy by which we ensure that our personnel are able to operate at or above that required by their counterparts in industry. This is essential for the Service to succeed wherever it may be called upon to operate.”

Editor: Simon Mander

© MOD Crown Copyright 2016