It’s a forlorn hope, but Kirsty Moore does not want to be the centre of attraction wherever the Red Arrows land for the next three years. She may be the first woman pilot in the RAF’s world-renowned aerobatics team, but so what?

Flight Lieutenant Moore would prefer to be known as a skilful fighter pilot whose day job is tactical air combat in a Tornado GR4, someone with a masters degree in aeronautical engineering, who has flown on the front line in Iraq, who is no stranger to being shot at and who will calmly and clinically rain death on anyone who attacks her.

As I said, it is a forlorn hope. And so it was that on Armistice Day I joined the Red Arrows at RAF Scampton near Lincoln, as they began preparations for the 2010 air show season. The team, which has a new chief in Squadron Leader Ben Murphy (known as Red 1) and two new recruits in Moore and Flight Lieutenant Ben Plank, will remain together until 2012. Their tour will culminate with a display at the London Olympic Games.

A November fog lay across the land, so all flying was cancelled and the nine Reds were on housekeeping duties, helping with the logistics of the 100-strong team that keeps the planes in the air. “It’s people outside the RAF who consider me unusual,” Moore says. “For almost two decades gender has not been an issue in RAF air-crew selection. But if this helps spread that message, it’s all to the good.”

Man or woman, it is a remarkable achievement to join the Red Arrows. The RAF’s fast jet pilots are the cream of British aviation talent; each year between 30 and 40 pilots apply to join the Reds, and this year only two were chosen. Kirsty is not the first woman to apply, but she is the first to make it through an arduous selection process that microscopically examines attitude, compatibility, presentability and flying skill.

One of the many who failed to make it was Nicky Moore, an RAF advanced weapons instructor and Kirsty’s husband, who applied in 2008. “Just the luck of the draw,” she says with a disarming smile.

Moore, 32, has also eclipsed her father, Robbie Stewart, a Tornado navigator. There is no hiding the fact that in the RAF, a navigator is looked upon as someone who wanted to be a pilot but didn’t make the cut.

In fact her father played a key part in Moore’s decision to join the RAF. During the first Gulf war he had a Tornado GR1 shot from under him and saved his pilot’s life by ejecting them both a second before the plane made a smoking crater in the desert. For days it was not known whether he was dead or alive. “I was 13 and it was a very difficult time, particularly for Mum,” she says. “There was the relief of finding out he was still alive, but he was a prisoner. When he came home we talked about it a lot. Dad had suffered quite badly and he ended up asking me if I was sure I wouldn’t really prefer to be a doctor ...

“I did some soul-searching, but I thought he’d done a tremendous job and that perhaps I could do it too. That experience confirmed in my mind the idea of making a career in the RAF. Both my parents have been amazingly supportive.”

The same experience led Flt Lt Plank to the RAF and ultimately into the 2010 Red Arrows. “I was 12 when the war started, and the Tornado crews that had been shot down were being paraded on TV. I thought they were doing something tremendously important, with a heroic quality to it, to which anybody could aspire. Far from being put off by it, from that moment there was nothing else for me.”

Even in the fog, Red Arrows pilots can practise manoeuvres by walking around a Hawk jet on the tarmac, memorising their positions. It’s clear that the other Reds treat Kirsty not as an honorary man, but as a woman fighter pilot. She says her strawberry-blonde hair looks a lurid shade of orange when she stands next to a bright red aircraft. In the mess they tease her for having ginger hair, an allegation she rejects while counter-accusing Plank of having very little hair (he dismisses that as a trick of the sunlight). “She is ginger and has the temper to prove it,” he says.

“I used to be fairly feisty, but I’m much more mellow now,” Moore counters. “In fact, I tie my hair back most of the time because I wear a helmet to fly or ride the bike, so there’s not much else you can do with it.”

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