Chinook
John Blakely.
Never mind later events, if there were these serious concerns over the Chinook airworthiness, how come the whole fleet was not at once grounded? Unless of course you subscribe to the remarkable implied assertion on this thread several posts back, that the whole chain of command was involved in some kind of cover up. Tell us why, at the time?
The technical background to all this is of course fascinating to an engineer like yourself, but you are again ignoring the airmanship aspects of the tragedy. Shall I say it again? The aircraft was about a quarter of a mile to the right of its track towards the lighthouse, and most unfortunatetly there is a fog station site which, given the very poor weather conditions at the time, could all too easily be mistaken for the lighthouse site (both have a couple of large rocks just offshore). Had the aircraft been on track, then the rate of climb would have cleared the hills with around 200-300 feet to spare. But a quarter of a mile to the right of that track, the hills were around 500 feet higher, leaving no room whatever for safety, and the crew found themselves faced with a granite hillside (hence the last minute severe control inputs).
Even without technical evidence in the form of CVR or whatever, this explanation fits all the facts, and leaves all talk of mysterious and rapidly vanishing technical failures, attempts by the IRA or whoever to lure the aircrat to its destruction, major distraction of the two pilots (remembering the golden rule 'keep flying the aircraft') or whatever, floundering in its wake. Any takers for little green men in the cockpit? I do not mean to be facitious, just trying to keep the discussion on a sensible level.. Regards to all serious contributers. JP