cazatou:
I'm pleased to see that tucumseh has chosen to reply to your post about him, personally. Far better that he should rather than have others speak for him. Having said that I will now contradict that last statement by embarrassing him dreadfully! Tuc was already posting on this forum long before I started doing so. In particular he was contributing to the curiously named "parliamentary questions" thread re Hercules ESF of Nigegilb. I hope that he will forgive me if I say that I then found his posts heavy going, strewn as they were with the technical acronyms of the MOD. I found though that if one kept attempting to understand them they were dynamite, already pointing up the labyrinthine machinations that had prevented that essential protection in a vulnerable tactical transport for some 40 years. The fact that I had flown it in blissful ignorance of having lacked that protection (in the late 60's/early 70s) made me both angry at the waste of lives that it lead to and implicated in the ignorance that allowed those in the know to sit on it. I'm sure that nigegilb would agree that the eventual long fought for success of his campaign to get ESF fitted was greatly helped by tuc's revelations of how fitness for purpose and airworthiness were so heavily compromised by an MOD bent on cashing in its "Peace Dividends". As soon as one battle was won, the next commenced, ie the Nimrod Inquest. Again tuc revealed the reality behind the beguiling assurances of MOD statements. Again he was attacked on this forum by those whose philosophy appears to be "my system, right or wrong". Again the culpability of the airworthiness authority in not enforcing its own regulations was displayed and this time formally declared and admitted to. Again I doubt if the outcome would have been the same without tuc. So now we come to Mull. Again we are told that there are no airworthiness factors to this tragedy despite more apparent shortcomings than were first realised in the two previous threads. It is clear to me that a pattern has long since emerged, the common denominator of which is the deliberate unpicking of UK military airworthiness provision at the behest of senior air officers in order to placate their political masters' demands for more and more cutbacks. As tuc says this has already cost many lives and I fear will cost many more before things are put right. It is my belief that UK Military Airworthiness provision must be removed from the MOD ASAP and put in the charge of an independent Military Airworthiness Authority. Such a body will have its work cut out to arrest and reverse this scandalous state of affairs and we will see more avoidable accidents such as this one before it can succeed. All the more reason it should start without any unnecessary delay.
Last edited by Chugalug2; 14th Mar 2009 at 13:04.