Skycop, the more I look at this the clearer it seems to become. I have to disagree strongly with your remarks re nav and crosschecking the TANS though.
Given a dodgy GPS and with minimal radio nav coverage at 2-300ft dr should have been the order of the day, and if they had the same opinion of dr as you’ve described it would have been very irresponsible to launch at all. May I respectfully point out that the RN has been using dr alone to return to a moving ship in similar weather since the 1930s. My marginal weather training included offset NDB approaches to rigs that prevent you bumping into anything if you overshoot, we even learned to judge ground speed and rate of closure but then we were only supporting some oil company or other. Rigs are nowhere near the size of a mountain, but flying directly at them in crap wx, even when we knew where they were was just not done. They even taught us to recognize when we had gone inadvertently IMC… So when someone aims to make an actual landfall straight at a 1400ft high mountain in 300’ cloudbase and 1500m vis it seems rather imprudent to me. Why not dr in perfect safety to a point west abeam the Macrihanish VORDME (10 NNE the Mull) and then intercept a low coast at a known and shallow angle.. This also provides the “impossible” cross-cx of the suspect TANS before coasting in. That, surely, is quite basic operational dr and good airmanship. Wouldnt you slow down if theres a cliff in the fog ahead? Shoulda diverted to Prestwick with a throbbing great VOR at TRN to help if you ask me. A sliver of doubt is beginning to trouble me over this whole nav business. It all looks to me like a CAVOK plan that has ignored the implications of lousy wx conditions both in the planning and the execution, with several elementary principles of Navigation (intentionally capitalized) simply omitted. Could it be that the RAF of the 1990s has become so adept at following a push-button nav-plan that dr and foul wx visual div nav have fallen into disuse on the squadrons?
Additionally, I find it hard to see how an experienced aviator (be it the crew, the Ops Officer or the CO/Flight Commander) would plan anything (except a follow-up SAR mission and a fleet of taxis) around a VMC-only transit from Ireland to E Scotland via Glen Mor (I assume that was the route) given the wx. I should have thought it almost certain that wx in the valley would be worse than offshore, ie cloud on the deck, and then its a very long way to hovertaxi in fog disregarding every rule in the low flying manual. Given the pax were such high value how could they even consider risking a forced landing in the bundhu or the hazards of mountain rescue flying techniques?
This is one big can of worms.
My feeling is this is an institutional problem that involves the servicewide attitudes to aircraft acceptance procedures, procurement, squadron and group maintenance, the training system, CRM and, as someone said, military discipline.
Christ, cant blame the RAF, make it an engine runaway and blame the crew!
Stinks.