Can anyone who's been to the inquest give us a quick precis of what 'couldn't be recalled' by some of the witnesses?
That’s a tall order, Equivocator, but here goes. These are all from my own contemporaneous notes.
Witness EA, now a Wg Cdr and OC 99, was, between 2001 and 2003, OC the 47 Sqn Flt whose name we are not allowed by the Coroner to mention. EA had “no recollection” of being given a presentation on ESF in 2002. The Coroner pointed out that a US Exchange Officer had mentioned ESF to him. He had no recollection of that officer or anyone else mentioning it. “Wouldn’t you have such a recollection?” asked the Coroner. “Not necessarily, we had so many factors at the time.....”
Graham Redgrave, a senior structural engineer at Marshall Aerospace didn’t recall having the wing from XV196, which had been damaged by small arms fire, in to Marshall’s as a damage check for XV179, and couldn’t recall when MoD first contacted them about ESF.
Witness DT was OC 47 Sqn from 2000 to 2003. He didn’t recall seeing Chris Seal’s Post Operation Report despite Seal having given evidence that he had seen it being forwarded up the chain over DT’s signature. The Coroner asked if he would have passed on Seal’s recommendations without question, and he said he respected Seal’s judgement. The Coroner found that “very strange”.
Air Cdre Ray Lock was Lyneham Staish Mar 2002 - Dec 2003. The Coroner said that a US exchange officer had been so concerned about the lack of ESF that he had spoken to the then Gp Capt Lock about it, and the Gp Capt had said that for anything to be done about it, someone would have to be shot down and killed. Air Cdre Lock said he did not recall any such meeting at any time. When questioned further by John Cooper, barrister for two of the families, he had “no recollection” of ESF being part of the discussion.
When the 3 Alpha upgrade to the Mk3 Hercules was coming through, he was aked if he recalled having any conversations about Hercules vulnerability, “no, no recollection”.
After Chris Seal’s report went up to 2 Gp and onwards, Air Cdre Lock said he wished he could “tell the court I went back to Seal to tell him what was happening, but I have no recollection of that”.
Those are my recollections of the more significant non-recollections of witnesses. Slightly off the subject, but possibly significant was Chris Seal’s observation to the court that the whole system was skewed because the people who should have the corporate memory are the Integrated Project Team (IPT), and they didn’t appear to have been involved in events following his Post Operation Report. He suggested that this lack of application of corporate memory was a break in the chain.
airsound