Vertico, Yes I totally agree, you echo my point, exactly. I believe the MOD decided to protect a tragically flawed decision (somewhere in the command chain) to go against normal airworthiness procedures, which had been breached in the case of this aircraft. I believe this was because of a lack of airframes mainly caused by the unexpected and unprecedented problems experienced with the engine software. As aircrew we were always warned about "press-on-itis"; in this a case it was senior management suffering from that malaise, with respect to the too-hasty insistence that the type was ready for service.
Walter, Do you think in my 30 years of aviation, almost all of it at low level at the time of this accident, and some of it in the same operational theatre, I might not have encountered marginal weather such as this before and not found myself in a similar situation to this crew? To operate in similar weather conditions was (and is) far from unusual for RAF support helicopters, despite what the likes of Cazatou might try to put across here, because he can only relate from his own experience, to fixed wing operations above safety altitude in such weather.
I do not believe this crew were attempting a landing on or near the Mull. Whether "special" homing equipment was or was not fitted (and I have never seen evidence to suggest that it was), the final flight parameters of this aircraft simply do not fit in with a crew attempting a landing, especially in poor weather. Group Captain Pete Crawford (who I knew quite well) said exactly the same thing during the original investigation.
It is important to understand that the most critical thing about a field landing is that the crew are spatially orientated with their surroundings. The physical capability of the rate of slowing of the aircraft is secondary; a crew would never attempt to initially increase speed using maximum power to a high cruise speed and then use a maximum rate of slowing. This applies whether a DME of any sort is in use. That type of equipment would not be used as the primary navigation aid in low level operations to a field landing site, especially on unfamiliar, high ground in marginal weather.