I’ve heard from Sarah on the Board of Inquiry papers. She was pleased to see, from the sad affair, that the ‘sixteenth witness refers to my father as being exceptional’.
Of interest –
Allocation of Blame. The Board concluded that no blame attaches to any person or organisation.
And, even more incredible than I thought -
Utilisation of Escape Facilities. Captain. The aircraft had rolled to port through at least 90 degrees but not more than 120 degrees, with a nose down angle of between 15 and 20 degrees when the Captain ejected from an approximate height of 300 feet by pulling the face blind. The blind partially covered the right side of his face because he only used his right hand to pull the face screen firing handle. Due to the attitude of the aircraft and the low height at the time of ejection the parachute had only streamed when the pilot passed through high tension cables close to the scene of the accident. The canopy caught one cable, pulled that cable onto the next one and caused an electrical short. This fused the nylon panels together which acted as a brake, and the pilot was lowered to the ground. As his feet touched he undid the quick release box and walked away.
Sarah’s sent me ten pdf pages from the BoI. (About 4Meg) She has no objection to these being sent on as they may be of interest to ex-Mil crews. If you‘d like to PM me with a direct e-mail address I’ll send them. An assurance that you are ex (or current ) Mil crew would help, apart from the obvious ones of course.