Chug,
Thank you for the link - just bought it as a Kindle book - and a riveting read it is. It makes one of the most cogent arguments I've seen regarding the scale of the failures and gross failures of duty by the relevant RAF senior officers. There are many, but the book correctly (in my view) homes in on the illegal decision to clear the aircraft for service. It also makes clear that the original RAF Board of Inquiry was wholly deficient in completely ignoring the airworthiness (or not) of the aircraft. Yes, people should be prosecuted.
What makes things even worse, to my mind, is the RAF's long standing failure to learn the lessons. I can confirm that the Chinook 'Servicing Instruction' to have the crewman check the security of the DECU connectors in flight (to me, a totally astonishing piece of paper) was STILL issued around 2016. For all I know it's still in place. The Hawk ejection seat accident at Scampton was (again, my view) mainly caused by the issue of an illegal and inadequate Technical Instruction by the RAF - who afterwards claimed that they couldn't find any records of any of the meetings that were held to decide to do it. That's admitting to a massive failure of basic record keeping and documenting airworthiness related decisions. And the MAA didn't even blink over that. As I've said before - having a nice shiny set of regulations in place doesn't help if the people on the ground don't comply with them - and if their superiors don't care (or don't know) that they're not being followed. And if their QA systems don't work.
I know that the RAF is chock full of totally excellent engineers and technicians - I've had the honour to work with more than a few. But it seems that the higher leadership of the RAF had (and probably still has) created a culture where getting aircraft in the air (especially to carry out a high profile VIP mission) is more important than crossing the i's and dotting the t's. Those i's and t's always come home to roost. I urge all RAF engineers to read this book, inwardly digest, and get ready to say 'NO' the next time they get told to do something like this. And maintain a 'work book' so that any time you 're told to do something plain wrong, you record it.
Best Regards as ever to all those excellent RAF engineers and technicians doing their very considerable best,
Engines