Boscombe Down's refusal to fly the Chinook 2
ShyTorque,
Thanks for your comment, which I have only just seen.
The refusal by Boscombe Down to fly the Mk 2 any more, the very day before the tragedy, has always struck me as one of the most significant items in this whole sorry saga, yet it has received very little attention. In my day at Boscombe (which I suspect was before many of the contributors to this thread were even born!), a decision to ground a test aircraft was always seen as the "nuclear option". In other words, whenever there was a serious problem, you did everything possible to work around that problem and continue with the main job in hand.
That could usually be done, either by avoiding known problem areas in the flight envelope or particular equipment functions. Not that these were ignored, but it gave time for the relevant manufacturer to develop an appropriate fix without bringing all work on the programme to a standstill.
Boscombe long had a reputation for causing delays in new projects for the Service, but IMHO that was never deserved. Everyone at Boscombe, Service or civilian, worked to the highest standards and we certainly did our utmost to get all new kit approved for Service use just as soon as possible. Too often, we were thwarted by the incredible time it took various manufacturers to produce fixes for problems we found.
I go into this detail just to put into its proper context the refusal by Boscombe to fly the Mk 2. It must have been an extremely widely-discussed and agonising decision. I would have expected the shock waves immediately to have travelled to the highest levels of MOD. If your very own test establishment (no layers of quasi-independent "agencies" in those days!) says that this aircraft is not fit to fly because ......., then I would have expected the hard stuff to hit the fan with deafening and immediate repercussions throughout the whole of that fleet until the problem was fixed.
Interesting to speculate as to why their airships ignored it on this occasion, but probably fruitless at this stage.
Meanwhile, we all rely on Brian to promote and pursue this long-running campaign to reinstate the reputations of Jon and Rick.