John Blakely,
My apologies for a tardy reply, but I am having to make constant trips to a house we are trying to sell and, at the same time, try to bring some order out of the chaos caused by last weeks storms which brought down 4 Oaks in our Garden alone. It took some time to clear the roads in and out of the Hamlet of fallen trees (I am getting to be quite a dab hand with a chainsaw). One thing I did learn in the process was, however, that this tiny Hamlet was the furthest outpost of the English enclave in France during the 100 years War. Just a few miles from the Town whose Scion fired the arrow that killed Richard the Lionheart.
I can lay no claim to match your knowledge on engineering matters in general or in the case of the Chinook. I would, however, lay a modest claim to some knowledge of the aspects of "AIRMANSHIP" which, in my humble opinion, are at the heart of this contentious matter.
Air Staff Instructions laid down quite clearly that ALL Aircrew ARE to partake of Breakfast before flying. The BOI found that the Co-Pilot and ALM's had Breakfast but were unable to establish whether the Captain did. This may seem a minor point; but it is, in my opinion, just the starting block for the series of errors which led to the crash.
I would suggest that it would be natural for both Pilots to meet at Breakfast and then go to the Met Office together to get a briefing: however only Flt Lt Tapper went to Met. He then proceeded to the crewroom to brief the rest of the crew - (at least it was assumed that is what happened as I do not recall any witnesses to that event). I would suggest that, apart from local training sorties, it is imperative that all Flight Deck crew, apart from Air Engineers,attend Met Briefing and that ASI's reflected that at the time.
You will have noted that the photocopy of the chart left behind in Ops showed that it was not in the handwriting of either of the Pilot's on the fatal flight; it was prepared by the RN Exchange Officer who was the Captain of the other crew because he assumed that "Crew Duty" constraints would require the use of BOTH crews.
We now come to the aspect of "Crew Duty Time". They had requested,and received, 2 extensions of Crew Duty Time: but as time passed and the PAX were not arriving it must have become obvious that they had a major problem. They would require another, exceptionnel, extension or permission to nightstop outside Theatre.
This was the starting point scenario for the sortie - way behind scheduled departure time - for a crew that had been on the go, without food, since early morning. It is little wonder to me that they made such basic errors on this final sortie as having disparate altimeter sub-scale settings. The first thing that is taught to Pilots who engage in low level flight is the imperative of having the regional pressure setting on all flight deck Altimeters so that there is NO confusion when executing an emergency climb to Safety Altitude.
I understand that the average groundspeed from the ATC fix leaving the Aldergrove CTZ boundary to impact was 158 kts.
I would suggest that anything approaching that speed would have been decidedly high given the forecast, and potentially suicidal in the actual, weather conditions.
I remember an accident report in "Air Clues" some 40 years ago where the headline was "Nibbled to death by ducks". A series of seemingly innocuous and trivial incidents led to a mass abandonment of 6 Hunter aircraft. In that scenario however, they all survived.