Tho this is clearly the subject of high emotion it is equally clearly a discussion of the semantics of how much a crew was to blame for a CFIT accident, for there is no evidence whatever to suggest it was anything else. It saddens me greatly that the stigma of Gross Negligence was awarded posthumously but nonetheless I find it very hard to see who else was to blame...allegedly missing FRC pages and faulty FADECs had no place here unless we resort to crystal balls and chicken entrails.
I cannot think of this accident without comparing it to the tragic loss of the RN SeaKing which was swiped out of the Falklands skies by a Hercules (1985?)killing the entire crew, a Herc that by all accounts was on a "routine Patrol" whose route and timimg had been refused to the Navy on the grounds of "security", though time has dimmed my recollection on that detail. This seems to me a far better subject for a claim of Gross Professional Negligence than an apparently clearcut operational CFIT incident, though the results are just as tragic.
Where then is the hue and cry into the loss of those men? Or did the services once accept the loss of personnel in accidents as an operational hazard to be regretted and investigated, but not litigated as seems to be the current self-destructive pattern?