But justice should not be limited to the exoneration of the crew, although they well deserve such, on some technicality which seems so far to be as far as the Campaign wants to go.
The team on board, whatever their seniority, was #1 in the NI theatre - and their loss was profound - every possibility of sabotage should have been considered and not summarily dismissed as has been the case. Justice can only be done when the perpetrators are identified. This process has not even started - the starting point should have been the establishment (1) of the conditions prevalent at the time of the crash, (2) the intended flight path, (3) and crews' practice on such runs for the critical phase - from these facts, which could have been obtained from other crews who had done this run, inquiries could have had some direction.
(1) From the outset the significance of the prevalent conditions for VFR flight has not been made clear - over the sea below the cloudbase visibilty was excellent - one has to have the perspective of someone at sea or in the air above the sea - comments from people on the hillside are meaningless as they would have been IN the localised mist; THE SOLE PROBLEM THAT THE WEATHER GAVE THIS CREW ON THEIR INTENDED ROUTE WAS THAT THE GROUND DETAIL OF THE LANDMASS WAS OBSCURRED THUS PREVENTING ACCURATE JUDGEMENT OF THEIR DISTANCE OFF DURING THEIR HIGH SPEED APPROACH.
If one looked back through the transcripts of the inquiries (or through this thread, for that matter) one would not have got this picture of the conditions - I have spent much time at sea on the coast of NW Scotland; I have even travelled on several occasions as a passenger on a military helicopter at low level along the shoreline in identical conditions; these conditions are common in those areas - and they are no problem for a helo at modest speed when close in - I can see the problem of approaching the shoreline very fast, though.
(2) Helos crossing from NI to this part of the mainland regularly made a bee line for the lighthouse area and then turned close in up the shoreline, at low level; they did so even in these conditions: I personally witnessed one such event while talking to the lighthousekeeper who told me that they did that all the time; although we could not see it from where we stood, the helo on this occasion would have been flying in the clear but with the mist shrouded high ground only a few hundred metres to its right but a clear view over the sea to its left and of the shoreline ahead HAVING MADE ITS SLIGHT LEFT TURN IN TIME.
Only a fleeting comment by one witness at one of the inquiries made the point that such a path up that bit of the coast was common - whether or not ZD576 was intending to do so should have been made clear at the very beginning.
(3) Now if a helo was doing such a flight - a high speed ferry flight, if you like - in such nice conditions (over the sea) and the crew expected to turn up the coast and remain in such nice conditions, it would be a shame to have to slow right down so as not to overshoot the turn - to make the turn in time would have them remaining in the clear and therefore OK for the VFR flight to continue - however, to overshoot the turn would put them in a world of mist and granite and where IFR would have had to have been the rule.
So what would they do? Well. I believe that such a dilemma would have been a common occurrence on such flights and so a practice would have been laid down for such flights - but this is conjecture as no one has addressed this issue, no one has mentioned it at the inquiries, no one has come forward to date - but many have dismissed this scenario on simplistic arguements.
ZD576 did not have the IFR option and must have intended turning up the coast.So how were they intending to do this safely?
ZD576 did not have a radar. This crew especially would not have relied on the TANS. I suggest that they could have used the Distance Measuring function of their TACAN - normally very accurate and reliable. The TACAN CU (Control Unit) in ZD576 was set accordingly - but detractors have pointed out that the Mac TACAN (VOR/DME) would not have given coverage at their altitude and approach - only the RAF can tell us if temporary portable ground equipment was made available for the use of such flights.
It remains for crews who have done this flight to come forward and clear this up.
I hope that you can see that establishing the above points would go a long way - they should have been addressed at the outset.
The significance of the reliance upon such ground equipment is that it can very easily be adjusted to give a false reading - unpleasant as it may be to confront such a possibilty, avoidance of the unpleasant should not be an excuse to avoid looking.
We owe it to EVERYONE on that Chinook to make every effort to get to the WHOLE truth - how I wish we had another team of the calibre of that one to investigate this tragedy - but we don't, and that is a measure of the enormity of their loss.