Oil Can, I thought you'd left the thread, welcome back......
Wg Cdr John Reid was the President of BoI with over 30 years engineering experience including the job of Sqn Boss. Not even he had heard of ESF before the crash. He admitted this at the Inquest. The boys on the flight, might have been the creme de la creme, but they were in good company, right?
How many people at Lyneham knew about it?
How many "users" would have known the process for contacting "DA" direct? How many still do? The American pilot was in a tough position, there was a big personality clash going on with his flt cdr. Like I said, shortly afterwards he was removed from post. I didn't hear the Flt Cdr's evidence first hand, but he was questioned at the Inquest as to why he did nothing with the information handed to him on a plate. He was unrepentant.
Search me.....
The flt cdr's evidence was formally challenged in court by both family barristers But I don't think it was re-visited. Some of the evidence was given "in camera", not disclosed to the public, and the American pilot was not allowed to give any evidence at all so we don't know exactly who he told, or what his counter would have been. MoD were interfering in the background and manipulating the legal system, such that any possible evidence gathering from this witness was effectively prevented. There was an investigation into this, but, the MoD reasoning was accepted by the Court Investigator. I took the view (and still do), that the MoD were directly interfering with the English judicial system.
It was a missed opportunity, but one of many. And when it transpired that two formal requests for foam were fired into Group before Afg and then Iraq conflict, this episode was overshadowed. Mainly because MoD and RAF had denied that there were any formal requests. You miss the point that there is a whole system designed to pick out the threat of fuel tank explosion and do something about it. Some of it worked, some failed spectacularly. And sure, there is nothing to stop a grass roots request, on this occasion it failed at the first stop. I would like to see a clearly designed process developed to allow "users", frontline crew, direct access to the Design Authority, should this situation of lack of interest or lack of support from CoC ever happen again.
I don't want to be controversial, but what would have happened if the boys HAD refused to operate at low level? Courts Martial?
I am not suggesting that they were unhappy, but without the info being sat on by Group, for reasons never explained, surely the creme de la creme would have been accused of LMF?
Last edited by nigegilb; 25th Apr 2009 at 13:57.