We all have (in my case had) a duty to notify our superiors of unsafe or dangerous procedures and practices.
Equally - we all had a duty to abide by the rules and regulations promulgated by those in authority over us.
Absolutely right.
As someone who held airworthiness delegation at the time, I can demonstrate beyond any doubt whatsoever that I fulfilled my duty by notifying my superiors (e.g. in the years immediately preceding Mull, an RAF 2 Star) of unsafe AND dangerous practices that compromised my/our ability to comply with the regulatory requirement to maintain airworthiness. Primarily, the ruling that anyone disobeying an order to ignore airworthiness was guilty of an offence. You must ask these senior staffs, who to this day stand by their rulings (not unlike Wratten and Day), why they disagree so violently with the regulations they are bound by. I just wish they would read the accompanying regulations which state they must resign if they cannot bring themselves to abide by their employer’s policy.
I chose to meet my duty to abide by the rules and regulations, in doing so disobeying direct orders. I know others chose to obey the order when they saw what would happen to them. That is why some aircraft and equipment have a more robust airworthiness audit trail than others. The Chinook Mk2 is one of least robust (along with Nimrod MR2 and C130, as ruled by two Coroners and agreed by SoS). As the same regs apply to all aircraft and equipment, and all form part of the same chain of delegation, it is impossible for anyone to ignore the statement of ACM Sir Clive Loader that MoD failed to implement their own regs, over a long period of time. 39 years according to the Oxford Coroner in he case of Nimrod – again accepted by Min(AF). Must I point out, again, that Nimrod and Chinook came under the same 2 Star, so it is not unreasonable to assume each were subjected to the same management (mal)practices? As confirmed by the NAO and HCDC.
What I describe is a failure of duty of care amounting to gross negligence; negligence that had already occurred long before ZD576 took off that day.