Cazatou I don't know if your steps laid out in post 3490 are correct or not, particularly No 3, as a mere Air Trafficker at the time how would I.
However if we assume they are correct, how do you or any of us know that Rick and Jon wilfully broke No 4 in which you stated.....
4. None of the above absolves the Flight Deck crew of ZD 576 of their responsibility to operate the aircraft in accordance with Military Flying Regulations, Air Staff Instructions and Group Air Staff Orders extant at the time.
As John Blakeley reminds us in #3486 this airframe featured in a list of 15 unexplained in-service incidents that led to Boscombe grounding their fleet. Furthermore, the official inquiry into this conceded that it was not possible to rule out some sort of failure as a potential causal factor -that alone makes it impossible to say, without the required degree of certainty in force at the time, what caused the accident.
So, again operating within the rules in force at the time, Gross negligence cannot and should not be levied at the 2 deceased pilots.
Therefore whilst it only remains a possibility, however strong/likely you may think that is, that the aircrew did not operate in accordance with the extant regulations to me, and many others on this forum, it seems a certainty that the airships did not abide by those same rules when discharging their role in the review and decision-making process.
So I think we agree on one thing - it is quite simple; where we differ is in what the outcome should be. My belief is that we should follow the regulations in force at the time.
No absolute certainty = remove the Gross Negligence decision.