Originally Posted by
noooby
I'll stand up and defend Ron. He was my tutor at University and one of the most honest men I have ever met in 30 years in Aviation. He had no axe to grind with anyone on any investigation. He reported what he found. You might not like what he said but his reports were factual and his Erebus report is still the ONLY factual legal document about the accident.
Did he tolerate idiots? No. He didn't think Aviation had any room for them. I tend to agree.
Try to argue with any of the facts in the report. They are all facts and none have ever been argued.
Killed by a kid who was late for work and was doing up his shoe laces while driving his car. Mounted the footpath and killed Ron instantly as Ron was walking home with the paper.
And people still send his widow hate mail on the Erebus anniversary. Grow up people. Ron told the facts as related directly to the accident. That was his job. The report is considered ground breaking in the world of Air Accident Investigation.
I think to be fair, any critique of Chippendale's (RIP) report has to take into consideration that the method of investigation and reporting up until that time did not take into consideration 'organisational factors' or even 'environmental factors' to an extent. He was likely constructing a report based on an investigation conducted in the standards for the time.
Justice Mahon, not schooled in methodology related to investigating accidents like this, perhaps naturally, must have asked himself the question... "OK, if this happened, what could have caused the crew to act in such a way???"
Having asked that question, he then proceeded to uncover shredding of documents, removal of pages from the binder, burglary of the Collins' home by person(s) unknown, where only Captain Collins' (RIP) papers were stolen, evidence given that brushed aside the change of coordinates... all paints a picture of some sort of coverup - if it wasn't so, then why did the company obfuscate and delay and in some instances, outright LIE about the causes and after the fact, abetted by the government of the day, set out to persecute and destroy the Royal Commissioner???
If people can digest all of the foregoing and then still say "it was Captain Collins' fault" then they are not listening.
Accident investigation changed forever after this accident, I would cite Dryden as a perfect example of the methods employed by Justice Mahon (RIP) were used to get to the root cause of that accident. Besides, didn't Mahon's final conclusion use the words "the single predominant cause..." ???