Adcuratio,
Thank you for responding, and adding another piece of the story - I suspected that 2FTS had carried out some form of audit in early 2014, your confirmation helps complete the picture. In the interests of clarity, which we all desire, the story of the start of this scandal now reads as follows: (This is as I understand it, please feel free to correct me)
1. 16 Dec 2013 - the MAA carries out an audit of the Vigilant and Viking organisation. The areas audited appear to have been 22Gp's CAMO organisation, Serco and a number of other posts.
2. MAA issues its audit report late December (Reference for the audit report was CAMO/CERT/2012/051). It's a pretty comprehensive 'fail', and 22 Gp CAMO are told they won't be approved by MAA. They're given 28 days to respond with a Corrective Action Plan
3. Early in 2014, 2FTS carry out an audit of all 2FTS glider engineering operations
4. DHAN 86 is issued by 2FTS on 17 Apr 14, then re-issued on 28 Jan 14 at Update 1. (The detailed Annexes setting out the airworthiness issues were not released in response to FoI request)
My take (and that's all it is) is that the starting gun for this debacle (and debacle it undoubtedly has been) was the MAA CAMO audit in December 13. 2FTS undoubtedly did the right thing in early 2014, but here's a key point - 3FTS and 22Gp should already have been doing 'audits' of glider engineering operations for years. In fact, on their formation 2FTS should have been supplied with the reports from recent QA and other inspections to guide their 'stand up' activities.
I absolutely agree that 2FTS were handed a big problem on their formation. It was a problem that had been building up from at least the year 2000, and was entirely due to serious and systemic failures in the RAF's execution, supervision and oversight of glider engineering activities. Examination of subsequent events shows that 2FTS (and very probably 22Gp) had absolutely no grasp of the scale of the problems facing them in April 2014. It took a searing letter from MAA to OC 2FTS in September 2015, and intervention by CAS the following month, to get some element of realism into the recovery plan. And that plan failed anyway.
I've often and regularly posted about my direct experience of simply excellent RAF engineering personnel, and I stand by those comments. But the bald facts are that, in this case, the RAF seriously dropped the airworthiness ball - which led to children being flown in non-airworthy aircraft. Why go on about this? Because I've seen absolutely nothing in public that indicates that the RAF understand and accept that they fouled up. Their public statements (e.g. from AVM Colville) has been designed to cover the problem up. Ministers have been led to make statements that come damn close to outright lies to help the cover up.
I'd be happier if more people were properly and blazingly upset over this. Sadly (so far) they're not.
Best Regards as ever to all those who have worked so hard to try to get Air Cadets back in the air.
Engines