Military AircrewA forum for the professionals who fly the non-civilian hardware, and the backroom boys and girls without whom nothing would leave the ground. Army, Navy and Airforces of the World, all equally welcome here.
What surprises me is that Chugalug2 hasn't commented yet despite him having knowledge of the older UHF homer, and being such a prolific contributor to this thread – I recall someone sometime back writing that the HP's intercom was set to UHF guard?; well here is a snippet of a post made by Chuggers in 29 Aug 2008 on the “Gaining an RAF … brevet” thread:
<<Regarding Violet Picture …. it was tied into the UHF T/R, by selecting ADF. If the recvr was tuned to Guard (243) then it became a means to home in on a Sarbe emergency beacon, and it was SOP to have this combination selected especially for Sea Transit. >>
Walter, you have it seems proved what you have maintained all along, that the HC2 could home in on a Covert Personal Locator Beacon thanks to an easily rackable removable fit . Don't, I beg you, snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by seeing me as someone concealing that information. All I know about such things is pretty well summed up by the quotation above, ie we had a fit in the Hastings which merely fed a L/R meter on the instrument coaming. I suspect that the technology has moved on in leaps and bounds since then, the only common denominator being the twin aerials common to both systems it would seem. I know nothing about such fits in the Chinook, I never flew the Chinook, it has always been my firm belief that the Almighty never meant wings to go round and round! I left military flying in 1973 (yes, I know!). Congratulations on your success it only goes to show, as with so much of this scandal, that if you keep on digging something of interest will surely turn up! Chug
Fitter2. "You must be an Air Rank Officer" You can take the chip off your shoulder, I was once a FIIA! JP
Shoulders checked..........nope, chips totally absent. I never had ambitions to Air Rank (although I have employed the odd one since leaving Her Majesty's service).
So you were an FIIA. Fascinating. Which of the qualifications left you unable to answer a straight question? Presumably one of the financial ones, from my dealings with the accountancy profession.
Acronym Definition FIIA Finnish Institute of International Affairs (Helsinki, Finland) FIIA Foreign Investment Implementation Authority (India) FIIA Financial Institutions Insurance Association FIIA Fidelity International Investment Advisors (UK) FIIA Fellowship of the Institute of Internal Auditors (UK)
Actually (apart from the ability to answer questions honestly) this has little to do with the business of why an unairworthy aircraft hit the Mull.
Thank you Walter. Someone posting on this thread saying "Sorry, I was wrong" is a refreshing and uplifting change from the usual dogged and entrenched positions of the MOD apologists that is its usual diet. So no problem, and respect to you for displaying such standards above the morass that many here wallow in.
Et tu, baston? Well no doubt you're right, in which case why don't you show us all the correct "staffed" way of congratulating Walter on his coup? After years of condescension, ridicule and being patronised it seems he was on to something after all. Now I wonder what is going to turn up next?
I am saying no such thing, baston (as well you know). That I believe was Walter's proposition, given that such a homing device was fitted. It would seem that the given, at least, could have been so. That is all.
Having met with him in Perth some years ago I am glad to see that Walter has proved that he was right about what kit was fitted, and the fact that it was not correctly covered by the paperwork or the MOD responses continues to say even more about airworthiness and the issues of the Chinook Mk2 introduction to service, together with the many investigative failures of the BoI. However, I do not agree with the rest of Walter’s theory – for which I have not seen any convincing evidence.
Baston's point, more innuendo (ie a baseless invention of thoughts or ideas) than anything else I suggest, that, based on Walter’s theory, it would have been careless of them to have continued to approach the Mull in that weather is yet again trying to justify the original speculation and hence the pilots’ guilt – especially since it is an undisputed fact that they had changed waypoints whilst approaching the Mull. Why would they do this if they planned to approach the landing site? I could think of several reasons relating to known airworthiness issues as to why, having made the waypoint change, they might have made a sudden change of plan and decided they had to land at the Mull helicopter landing site, but they would also be speculation.
This thread is about why they were found guilty of Gross Negligence based on speculation by senior officers, and not supported by the BoI’s findings, at the time, and NOT on trying to make facts from speculation on what caused the crash – we don’t know and will never know this, and I have difficulty in understanding why so many contributors cannot grasp this fact. Clearly we are all entitled to our thoughts and to express an opinion, but finding such guilt based on opinions and not facts is not part of our system of justice, and, as all who write here know, was against the RAF's own rules of the time. Everything we have found out about the airworthiness issues and the mistakes made in the Introduction to Service since that time makes such a finding, already unjustified under these rules, even less credible.
Instead of continuing to go round in circles I would still like to see one of these contributors who are so certain that they “know” the answers and can therefore justify the guilty verdicts of what amounts to manslaughter against the pilots, answer the simple questions I asked in post 6256 – which had been put to the AOCinC without getting any response. Any takers?
John Blakeley. It is not for me to defend their airships, bu I am amused by your reference to your 'simple questions ' earlier. When I scrolled back, I found that you had asked at least eight questions in that verbose posting. No wonder you did not get a straight answer. Regards JP
You must be getting pretty desperate with this response! Far beneath your usual standard. As far as I can see the only thing you do is to defend their airships, as you call them. They were, verbose or not, simple questions. But then in my view you have never responded, with anything other than blind support for the Reviewing Officers' speculation, to simple questions on why the verdict, which broke their own rules, was justified either. You have also, as far as I can see, refused to acknowledge or consider at all that the many facts that support the airworthiness and Introduction to Service issues the aircraft had might in some way support the need to cast doubt on the "rule breaking" verdict either! Since you know what caused the crash perhaps you know the answers, and you could answer a couple of the simple questions to help me out.
I'm having a slow day here - I removed Walt from my ignore list again to have a look at this evidence people find compelling and found:
- 2 pictures of HC2s that he'd posted (the second one is an HC2, Walt - that colour scheme didn't come in 'til the Mid Life Update, and HH was never a unit code on any HC1 in the early 1990s), both of which have the UHF homing aerials fitted. In the second photo, one is in front of the mainwheel leg and the other is to the left of the retractable landing light.
- A picture from CGB showing the original paintscheme plus the same aerials.
I'm aware from later ops that the walk-on CPLS was/is able to use the same aerials.
How then, despite Walt's misidentification of the 2nd a/c in his picture and the presence of the same aerials in both, does this somehow translate into his being right all along?
Baston's point, more innuendo (ie a baseless invention of thoughts or ideas) than anything else I suggest, that, based on Walter’s theory, it would have been careless of them to have continued to approach the Mull in that weather is yet again trying to justify the original speculation and hence the pilots’ guilt
Sorry JB - but no, that is incorrect.
Quote:
Are you saying that on Walters evidence they may have been doing a 'self approach' to the Mull?
I asked this of CHUGAZ subsequent to his post that I found intriguing.
Pilots guilt - well yes. If you read my posts I have always been of the opinion that a verdict of pilot error was much nearer the mark than gross negligence. If however they HAD been making an approach in that weather - and I have not a clue as to wether they were, that opens up a whole new can of worms. Someone somewhere would have known about it and presumably authourised it. It would have been a foolish thing to do.
John Blakeley. I have never commented on the airworthiness aspects of this case because I am not qualified to do so, and even if I were so qualified I have not seen the documents. But my background does permit me to point out that the crew committed a grave breach of airmanship by flying as they did and where they did in those weather conditions. You may well say that the a/c should not have been flying at all, but the plain fact is that it was flying and this crew was flying it. I am sure I do not need to repeat the whole argument yet again, but it has nothing to do with blind suport of the AMs. Regards JP
I am happy to be corrected, especially as the rest of your new post reinforces the point that I and others are trying to make. If indeed Walter's theory were to be correct and they were making an approach to the Mull for a trial, for which they would have been authorised, it was a major failure of the BoI not to recognise this. If having been authorised for such a trial they had pressed on into bad weather then as a minimum pilot error could have been involved - indeed it is my understanding that at the time of the BoI, for whatever the thinking was, the families were told that there could be a verdict of "balance of probabilities pilot error".
I don't think they were conducting such a trial since I cannot believe that on the operations side the BoI would have failed to find this out (the engineering side is a completely different matter) and again if they intended to approach the Mull landing site why did they change waypoints? The BoI of course in the end did not come up with a pilot error verdict since, rightly, they did not have enough evidence to support this, and I would question even their "error of judgement" comment since all the evidence points to the fact that the last thing the crew intended to do, either in their flight planning or in the last moments leading to the waypoint change, was to attempt to climb over Mull. To remind you:
The Board was unable to positively determine the sequence of events leading up to the accident, and therefore concluded that although it is likely that Flt Lt TAPPER made an Error of Judgement in the conduct of the attempted climb over the Mull of Kintyre, it would be incorrect to criticise him for human failings based on the available evidence.
However, the bottom line and the point you make is that even if a pilot error verdict could be supported with facts (not speculation as I see JP repeats yet again in his latest post where he again refuses to recognise that issues which question the airworthiness of the aircraft could also have affected the crew's ability to fly it on the planned and safe flight path) this is a long way from the finding of criminal irresponsbility that the Gross Negligence verdict (based on ignoring the rules and even wilder speculation) means. That, and not speculation on either the operations or engineering side as to the cause of this accident, is, I believe, what this thread is about.
It is an interesting conundrum as to what the 'motives' of some of our posters are. Whether it is a form of protective 'croneysism' of which we are unaware due to anonymity here, a blind faith in the absolute infallibility of 'senior officers' or just a lack of comprehension I know not, but comments like "But my background does permit me to point out that the crew committed a grave breach of airmanship by flying as they did and where they did in those weather conditions" leave me wondering what insight these posters have that the BoI did not - if any? My background of several years of low-level ops does not 'permit me' to make those assumptions. I can surmise but not be certain. Perhaps I should also add for the sake of clarity that I am acquainted with some of the senior officers involved, but not the crew?
BOAC. I must have missed something; I thought it was generally agreed here that the a/c flew into IMC well below the appropriate SA. What is disputed is why the a/c did so, n'est pas? JP
BOAC. I must have missed something; I thought it was generally assumed here that the a/c flew into IMC well below the appropriate SA. What is disputed is why the a/c did so, n'est pas? JP
As no one actually knows if they entered IMC I think it reads more accurately as above
