Where to Begin
Cazatou,
I disagree with so much in your last post that it is difficult to know where to begin! So a few thoughts, not necessarily in any order of priority:
That there was a duty of care failure seems to be beyond doubt, but where this occurred is subject to significant doubt – you obviously like the hypotheses turned into facts approach of the Senior Reviewing Officers – who you now say numbered three and not two.
The join in the both the BoI and Stn Cdr Odiham’s comments is very obvious and shows a clearly imposed change of direction. I know this can happen very easily – it did to a BoI where I was the junior member on a Buccaneer crash – we started again with all new people except for myself when the AOC did not like the first verdict! What is clear, unless you accept hypotheses as facts, is that there has to be doubt – read the first four paragraphs of the Stn Cdr’s comments to see his doubts – read the Senior Reviewing Officers own doubts – doubts ignored when it came to the verdict. If there is doubt then the three Senior Reviewing Officers would appear to have joined together to deliberately ignore the “rules” in AP3207. It was at this level and not the BoI or the Stn Cdrs that the Gross Negligence decision was made – a decision that to this day leaves two pilots’ families with a criminal slur against their sons/husbands/fathers names. If you are happy that justice can be dispensed in this way with no defence and no appeal then there is little that I can say here to change your mind. However, given that this verdict could not happen today and the findings of the FAI and HoL amongst others, are against MOD I can only assume that they (whoever they are in Main Building) are content to apply the same ethical standards to this case as they do to families appealing against shell shocked victims of WW1 being found guilty of cowardice and shot as deserters!
The fact that (by direction?) the Stn Cdr Odiham reluctantly accepts that the pilots failed to exercise their duty of care may, if it were to be true (but we will never know) be negligence, but it is not automatically gross negligence. Read my post on how a gross negligence verdict may be arrived at and the criminal implications of manslaughter, and tell me how this equates to three senior RAF officers in the command chain coming to a verdict with no defence of the accused and no appeal. Read the excellent Juridical Review Part 6 of 2001 for a totally independent view of the shortcomings of RAF justice in this case.
You have been very selective in your response – what is your view on the conclusions that the two reviewing officers (I assume without CAS this time, but you may know differently) came to on the Glen Ogle accident. Here, thanks to a fully functioning ADR and CVR the BoI could show conclusively that the actions of the pilot (for whatever reason) led to the loss of the aircraft and the death of his navigator – what price the duty of care here. One of the reviewing officers actually commented “Regardless of the circumstances of this particular accident, I agree that [the pilot] should be absolved from blame.” A fairly inconsistent approach to the dispensing of justice when compared to the Chinook I suggest.
Why have you, by implication at least, introduced the red herring of crew duty time – this was not a factor in the accident as you well know.
Why were the obvious airworthiness issues of the Chinook fleet, and ZD 576, and the flight safety critical defects being suffered at the time virtually ignored by the BoI and totally ignored by the senior reviewing officers – where was the full examination of the evidence that was available by the review procedure – I have never seen such a biased outcome as this – I believe its called situating the appreciation! Add to this Boscombe’s concerns, which contrary to MOD statements later were not just with their own trials but also with the defects being experienced on the in-service fleet, with the latter being the stated reason for trials stopping, and you have to wonder why none of this was drawn to the BoI’s attention or commented on by the Review process,
Yes I was aware of the limitations of the Stn Cdr Aldergrove’s comments. He is the only one to comment on the illegal maintenance practices of the detachment wrt ZD 576, but then he accepts them with no idea of their potential implications.
You are correct that the verdict did not change in the Review Process (but it was different to the BoI itself) and that is because the three senior reviewing officers agreed the verdict between them with the two in the procedural chain actually brining it in. Neither Stn Cdr mentions Gross Negligence. I cannot say more for the moment, but the Mull Group has absolute proof of this, and as you were clearly in the thick of things at the time (IFS?) you will probably know to which very senior level correspondence I am referring!
As I recall the AOC’s comments were dated Apr 95 well before the anniversary of the crash – are you saying that the BoI was then delayed beyond June 1995?
I could go on, but I do not believe you will be convinced – as a simple engineer though I am amazed at how many pilots seem to be content that criminal (in) justice could be dispensed in this manner.
JB