A warm welcome to you Pheasant! As to your query, it merely feels like 25 years as Caz has pointed out. Why is it a sticky, well that's one for PRuNe Pop. For myself it is important 15,25,35.... years after an event when the very regime responsible for packing the creme of this nation's security experts into a knowingly unairworthy aircraft pins the epitaph of Gross Negligence on its pilots without anything other than circumstantial evidence. We have just seen the unacceptable face of British Banking brought to book by the Treasury sub committee armed with chapter and verse by the man who warned his bank ten years ago that they were flouting the regulations. He was fired! Ring any bells, MOD? It seems that the campaign to reverse this injustice is a one trick pony. The cunning plan? To get the MOD to reverse its stance out of a sense of decency. Surprisingly that approach has now failed! My opinion is that revealing the lack of airworthiness of the aircraft also reveals the culpability of the MOD, as with the Hercules, as with the Nimrod. Their arrogant position that only they can judge this case, flouting the findings of the FAI, the HoL, previous SoS's etc would become totally untenable. Most importantly though the thread that connects so many UK Military Aircraft Accidents, ie that of lack of Airworthiness, will secure yet another strand. If you are UK Military Aircrew that should concern you, even if the restoration of the good names of these two pilots doesn't!