Brian
All well in the frigid land but boiling under the collar as we work to right this unhappy tale. I salute you, you irritating sod.
Tucumseh, I'm obliged for your PM. I will be in touch.
To Boslandew, Jon Tapper wanted a Mark 1. His request was turned down. He was barely current in the Mark 2 because of the shortage referred to by Brian. He specifically asked what would happen if he broke the icing rules surrounding the limited CA release of the Mark 2. He was told he would be held personally liable, thus court-martialled.
He flew a troop movement sortie on the morning of June 2 to Ballykinler. He was not happy with a PTiT guage lag. Rick Cook's last recorded conversation as he left to go to ZD576 that afternoon was to raise concerns over the engine control systems with a colleague. Jon and Rick, both Special Forces, ironically were not due to fly the roster that day but insisted because of their superior Combat Ready status. Were they happy doing it? Nope. Did they have a choice? I would also say tragically, no, no choice at all. They had done all they could to make their concerns known. It was their sorry lot, as it was the sorry lot of all those flying Mk2s in 1994, as it is those trying to fly Mk3s in 2007.
And the Loadies too were fiercely aware of the Mk2 shortcomings. From memory, it was Kev Hardie who had experienced a debonding incident on take-off, and when he got into the 'broom cupboard' found a loose spring. It forced ad hoc SOP fleet-wide - basically, shake and wiggle before take-off. If something falls off in your hanbd, don't take-off. If nothing falls off up you go.
It wasn't pretty and nothing in that respect was by the book, creating a cascading loss of standards. The rulebook ("limitations - to be issued") had gone out the window, combined with confusing FRCs by the time the first Mk2, ZD576, arrived in Ulster.
Few should be surprised - only with this privileged hindsight mind you - that within 25 minutes of take-off all would be dead.
Sir Patrick Mayhew, the Northern Ireland Secretary of State at the time of the crash, stood at Aldergrove and received home a number of those killed. I spoke to him about the accident years later and he told me he had no idea there were so many doubts about the aircraft. He too does not believe the pilots were to blame, and that is an important voice because as the ranking politician he had access to all he could want. And he wanted answers, because he had lost his security/political contact on that flight, John Deverill, the then deputy head of MI5. Sir Patrick was astonished to learn of the historic problems of the fleet.
The following represents the drumbeat of apparent inevitability leading to the June 2 crash in 1994:
April 8, 1994: returns from US after midlife update
April 21, 1994: First FADEC incident results in engine no. 1 being replaced
April 26, 1994: Second FADEC incident. New No. 1 engine is replaced
May 10, 1994: In an incident unrelated to FADEC, a mounting bracket fell off the flying controls.
May 17, 1994: No. 1 engine emergency power caption lit up three times. The no. 1 engine was rejected
May 26, 1994: ZD576 suffered various “spurious captions”. These included a master caution and no. 2 engine fail caption
May 27, 1994: Fl. Lt. Jonathan Tapper requested permission to keep an extra Mk. 1 Chinook in Northern Ireland “because of the limited operational capabilities of the HC2”. His request was turned down.
May 31, 1994: ZD576 was delivered to Northern Ireland.
June 2, 1994: ZD576 crashed in disputed circumstances on the Mull of Kintyre killing all 29 people on board.
Between April 20 and June 2, “there were a number of incidents involving airborne HC Mk2 of which approximately five were due to FADEC malfunctions whil operating in normal mode. There had also been other incidents on the ground. The MoD(PE) Project Office sought explanations of the various incidents from the aircraft and engine manufacturers but in the absence of satisfactory explanations Boscombe Down suspended trials flying.” Letter written by a Colonel within the MoD Procurement Executive, the contents of which were handed to the Fatal Accident Inquiry.
June 3, 1994, the day after the crash, experts from Boscombe Down wrote a memo crticising the FADEC software installed in Mk2 Chinooks. They concluded: “. . . the product has been shown to be unverifiable and is therefore unsuitable for its intended purpose”.
It is worth noting this June 3 memo was not given to the BoI and was discovered independent of the investigation.