ZD576 was the first time a BoI had been made public and the first time the management process of the RAF was therefore opened to scrutiny.
It was also a shocking tragedy killing so many people who were part of the defence establishment, including the then head of the Army’s force reconnaissance unit as well as the deputy head of MI5.
A grim own goal for the RAF upper echelons to deal with from CAS Graydon on down and one that undoubtedly needed explaining. Sir William felt his rank required a sense of leadership that a more junior officer, the board president Andy Pulford, could not be expected to muster.
Having read that Pulford’s inquiry had concluded only a possible cause based on the known evidence, Sir William took matters into his own hands together with Sir John Day.
“… it was a prerogative that Air Vice-Marshal Day and I had to send it back to the Board of Inquiry and to draw that to their attention and to say, "Come on, you have to be more positive than this." We did not do so because this was Wing Commander Pulford's first Board of Inquiry, this was the largest peacetime tragedy that the Royal Air Force had suffered. There was enormous loss of life. And I personally would not impose that judgement upon a young Wing Commander. That was the responsibility of senior commanders.”
When I heard Sir William explain this to the Lords I felt for the first time I understood what had happened inside the RAF/MoD to allow the negligence finding to arise. Such certainty in this case is surely an unjustified overreach in part because Sir William had told everyone in his original reviewing comments there was inevitably a degree of speculation as to the cause because of the circumstances of the accident. Little wonder so much confusion remains.