Cazatou's points are relevant.
This sortie was late in the day: it would be nice to know that the crew was refreshed and ready for it;
it would be nice to know that the most able crew was doing it in view of the importance of the passengers (yes they were VIPs to the people of NI and the service personnel involved in the conflict – they were indeed irreplaceable and their loss ended any practical alternative to capitulation to the peace process negotiated between MI6 and the IRA);
it should not have been thought to have been less vulnerable to the usual operational threats because it was going out of “theatre” - it had, after all, to cross 10+ miles of Antrim countryside before getting its feet wet and the Mull should have been such an obvious spot to bushwack a mil helo crossing from NI (as I have suggested recently) that extra awareness should have been in order – and one would have hoped that the crew was in 100% condition to react to the unexpected;
add to this the slip in a post some years back from one of you who appeared to be knowledgeable of operations at the time that it had been the intention several weeks earlier to use an HC2 Chinook for this flight;
seems to an outsider that there had been some higher influence that disrupted the usual detachment decision making processes, preparations, and routines.
Or was planning and preparation at the detachment level as chaotic and unsatifactory as you all seem to accept as the norm? - or at least as you portray it to the public? Do you think that a request for a flight for such VIPs would have just plopped on someone's desk at detachment level with no further dialogue with a higher level of command?
Is it not time for you who know to come forward with all you know about the planning for this flight and who specifically put it together and ultimately gave the go-ahead given the worries of the aircrew re the HC2 Chinook, the weather, the unknowns re the flightplan, etc, etc, etc...? A more deserving fall-guy than the captain perhaps ...