Walter Kennedy
Your post included the following:
Circa 1st week July 1994 (reference detail lost - Author Owen Bowcott) – article titled “Radar recording ‘shows helicopter hit hillside due to navigation error’”
“Recordings of military radar tracking the RAF helicopter which crashed on the Mull of Kintyre last month show it flew straight into the hillside without altering course, writes Owen Bowcott.
“The flight path, revealed by air traffic control sources yesterday, reinforces suspicions that the accident was caused by a navigational error.
“… A controller who had seen the recordings, and requested his identity not be revealed, said: ‘The Chinook looks like it went more or less straight into the hillside. There was no distress signal. It all points toward some sort of navigational error. The pilot must have misjudged his position. He only needed to be half a mile to one side.’”
I wasn't aware of radar recordings but, be that as it may, it would be false to assume that, because the radar track continued in an apparently straight line, the aircraft was under control at the time. Indeed, the fact that it did not turn to the left towards the new turning point might indicate that it was not. One tends to think in terms of an aircraft being "out of control" as one that is in some sort of mad gyration, but the term really means that the aircraft is not in the control of the pilot. There is no certainty about what was going on in the cockpit (there being no ADR or CVR) and it is therefore not possible to show "beyond any doubt whatsoever" that the aircraft's apparent track was caused by the negligence of its pilots.