VictorPilot:
why did the aircraft crash?
I'll give you your due VP. Most maiden/low posters who give us the benefit of their certain knowledge of the answer to your rhetorical question do not identify themselves as MOD staff/air officers at the time, leaving us to deduce that for ourselves. You man up from the outset and own up to that dubious qualification. Why dubious? As SFFP reminds us NO-ONE knows for sure what happened or why, not you, nor me nor even Messrs Wratten and Day. What we do know now though is that a deliberate and sustained policy of neglect (not even benign) of the mandated duty to enforce the UK Military Airworthiness Regulations was being enforced from 4* level downwards, affecting every military airfleet including the RAF Chinook HC-Mk2's. That an institution that so flagrantly reneged on its own responsibilities has the effrontery to so unjustly enforce the arbitrary findings of two Air Marshals with no real proof and contrary to other more respected national institutions' own findings is par for the course for this discredited organisation that so cries out for reform. That reform must start with the removal of airworthiness regulation to a seperate and independent MAA.