Today and yesterday, I have seen three fighter jets flying around the Essex Coast in the Mersea/Bradwell area. They generally were flying in tight formation over land and the sea. The colours are odd - one is red, one yellow and one orange. On one pass, they were accompanied by another aircraft - older, straight wings with pods on the end.

I'm not sure what they were doing, and I am bot able to identify aircraft, but they looked like modern jets. I could not make out any markings on them - though one had red/white/blue stripes on the tail (so RAF?).

Any ideas? It seemed unusual to me. No airshows here that I know of.

Ill have your answer in the very near future

From the instagrams you've tweeted, I'd say they're probably hawk trainers. They're certainly not front-line fighters, nobody's used that kind of wing for those for ages.

here you go:

http://forums.airshows.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=59139

and:

http://forums.airshows.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=59167

That's them! Thanks.

And based at North Weald too? That's local enough for me to potentially see them at home.