JB
I will always be appreciative of the help and expert input you have given to me and this forum and I hold you with great respect as I am certain do most parties interested in this event.
This is why I was dissapointed when you, whose opinion would be given more than average weighting by any reader, so strongly dismissed the idea of a low level Navex - it is quite wrong to dismiss such and in consequence many related aspects.
I recall one comment in one of the inquiries when an RAF witness referred to this particular flight as a training flight (can't locate it just now) when someone seized upon this and asked further, he back-pedalled by saying that all such SF sorties could have a training element (or words to that effect).
Here is another reference to training that I think sums it up:
MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON CHINOOK ZD 576 TUESDAY 16 OCTOBER 2001 SQUADRON LEADER ROBERT BURKE by Lord Tombs 753. The last few seconds. A. .... Even on a transit trip you try and get the maximum training value out of it and that is the way we operate, that is our protection against being shot down or detection.
Bearing in mind that there was no outgoing brief and that the actual maps used by the crew were not found (in the wreckage) surely you cannot dismiss the possibility of their including an extra activity that could have been accomplished with minimal diversion from their route when passing an ideal location (so often used by such crews for training and where Flt Lt Tapper had landed before) they had after all got through the Antrim hills at low level I'm sure the passengers would have found the flight more interesting and not objected.
The latest news is that the pilots are not going to be cleared there is enough circumstantial evidence for you collectively to put your efforts into consideration of an extra activity perhaps grounds for a new inquiry.
Remember that the finding of gross negligence was based upon their supposed incorrect rate of climb when intending to overfly the Mull? If you can get your experts together and they form a concensus view that the most reasonable conclusion was, say, that they were intending to land/pass closely to a point on the Mull then the original finding was baseless.
As I posted to Brian Dixon recently what have you got to lose?