Originally Posted by
Foghorn Leghorn
I think it’s terribly disrespectful to say that Cpl Bayliss was ‘left behind’. That kind of pejorative language is unhelpful and wrong. All the examples you’ve cited are historical. It doesn’t make it right, but as I say, you don’t mention what’s being done today and for the future, yet you tar everyone with the same brush.
I understood from the SI report that Corporal Bayliss didn't make it out. Is that wrong? No? Then he was left behind. Or remained in the aircraft. Or left alone to cope. Either way, he was killed by systemic failings. Style and substance.
What group have I tarnished with the same brush? In fact, it is MoD who has tarnished everyone in Air Systems (including, latterly, the entire MAA), by consistently claiming that all but one person (me) failed to notify ANY systemic safety failings. It said this as criticism of myself, not as an admission. In 2003 it was invited by the Information Commissioner, at my behest, to withdraw this pejorative claim against many of my colleagues, and it has consistently refused. In doing so, it rejected the fact that successive RAF Directors of Flight Safety had issued the same warnings from 1992-98, in turn reiterating what internal MoD auditors had stated since 1988.
I'm glad something is being done today and for the future. But until MoD acknowledges the historical facts, it cannot begin to understand why it's doing what it's doing, or getting a lot of it wrong. Or why it's happening 33 years after formal notification. I still have the letter I wrote on 13 January 1988, which precipitated one of the audits, which confirmed the 'savings at the expense of safety' policy later confirmed by Mr Haddon-Cave. (The auditor took about two weeks to give MoD a bigger rocket than Mr H-C managed after nearly two years). There, I suggest, is where the reason for the demise of many fleets lies. But far more importantly, the unnecessary deaths of so many aircrew and passengers.