Chug,
Thank you for coming back - I thought I should respond to your post.
I don't think that I have ever said that the UK's problems with military airworthiness were ever 'a scandal solely affecting the RAF'. I certainly agree with you that the problems caused in the 1980s within the MoD have filtered down to all operators of UK military aircraft, across all three services. But for this thread, that's not, in my view, the point.
The problems with the ATC glider fleet are, in my view, an RAF owned problem because this was an RAF procured, owned, operated and maintained fleet of aircraft. As this thread is about the ATC glider issue, I've posted to try to help discussion of what went wrong - and in this case, it went wrong within the RAF. I'd also add this observation: most of the things that went wrong with the glider fleet went wrong at first and second line, not within the upper reaches of the MoD. Very few VSOs were involved, whatever the colour of their stripes.
What has begun to emerge is a failure of people at first and second line to do their basic jobs. Maintenance wasn't properly supervised. Repairs weren't properly recorded. Airworthiness critical documentation weren't properly maintained and archived. Ageing aircraft audit recommendations weren't implemented. Damaged aircraft weren't repaired. And so on. To repeat - this sort of stuff was and is the responsibility of SO1s, SO2s, SO3s, Chief Technicians and so on across the chain. And the really big concern should be whether these failings are specific to the ATC fleet, or are systemic across the service.
I always try to stay away from subjective inter-service comparisons on these threads. I apologise if you feel I've not managed that this time.
Best Regards as ever to all those STILL trying to pick up the pieces,
Engines