I know that the equipment was available in ’94 and fitted to some of the first HC2s – but I have no way of knowing if it was fitted to ZD576 (although much circumstantial evidence points to its use).
Walter, you've heard from crews who flew ZD976 just prior to its final flight that the equipment you keep describing was
NOT FITTED to this or any other chinook Mk2, so please stop banging on about it!
You are entitled to your opinions, but your insistence on repeating this over and over, despite assurances that the kit wasn't fitted to the aircraft, is quite ridiculous. We (the Campaign) don't need any additional hypotheses as there are already sufficient plausible possibilities to cast doubt on the finding that the pilots were negligent. This has been acknowledged by the Scottish Fatal Accident Inquiry, the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee and the House of Lords Select Committee but, for some reason yet to be discovered, not yet by the MoD/New Labour Government. For heaven's sake, even the Government of the time (John Major and Malcolm Rifkind) has now come down on the side of the Campaign and asked that the negligence finding be removed! One would have thought that the present Government would have enjoyed getting mileage out of the fact that its predecessors (the dreaded Tories) had got things so wrong, but something is holding them back.
May I respectfully suggest that you turn your intellect to fathoming out this enigma, rather than persisiting with your own pet theory which has already been discredited?