Originally Posted by
72forever
Sir John Days Obituary in The Telegraph quite glosses over this whole episode. As can be seen I served on 72 when he was the boss and one couldn't have wished for a more decent fellow. However, I cannot agree at all with the decisions made in this instance. I watched the documentary and, having flown on numerous air tests with Bobby Burke I was amazed to see that he has hardly changed over the decades. Nothing new really came to light in the BBC program, all those who know, know it was a whitewash but sadly mud sticks.
When he was your Boss he was a commander. Ditto when he commanded a Station, but outside of that is a bureaucracy and managers with grandiose titles. So he became a manager and thus participated in office politics. He was not alone in this, but Mull pointed up the difference as no other. I see that one of our more illustrious members covered Sir John Day's infamous Finding in a letter to the Royal Air Force News, which to its credit published it. I would only add to John Nichol's necessarily brief points that the Finding was set aside by the SoS for Defence, so the 'wider RAF' would have questionable justification if it did indeed 'support the finding of Gross Negligence'. Rather it would suggest that the BoI should have been reconvened to find out just why ZD576 crashed, killing all 29 occupants. Lord Philip in his Review determined that the Interim CAR was mandated upon the RAF. In effect it forbade the RAF flying the Chinook Mk2. Instead an illegal RTS was issued by ACAS with tragic consequences.