Pulse 1:
Nine years of debate on this thread, together with evidence from the BOI, FAI and HoL, have convinced me that there is considerable room for doubt on both of these factors.
Nice bit of good old British understatement there, old boy, if I may commend you. For those who complain that this thread is going nowhere these days may I reiterate Pulse's point and add to it that there is also little room for doubt, thanks primarily to this thread, that the aircraft was unairworthy. Indeed it would appear that was the case for all of its short (barely 50 flight hours) life, in company with its sister Mk2's. So an unairworthy aircraft proceeds on a low level VFR transit flight across the North Channel, planning to turn left to parallel the west coast of Kintyre but instead crashes into its mist covered hillside despite its pilots being experienced SF trained ones. The subsequent BoI and senior RO's ignore or are ignorant of the airworthiness shortcomings (in the BoI's case primarily because the RAF Odiham Test Pilot who had much personal experience of them was ordered not to speak to the BoI) and instead bizarrely decide that the transit was high speed in IMC despite eye witness evidence to the contrary. As has been stated above the aircraft crashed in IMC, into the mist shrouded Mull hillside, but there is compelling evidence that such conditions existed purely on that land mass and did not extend into the "vicinity" of the Mull. The inference of the above scenario to my mind is that when the aircraft entered IMC it was under little or no control. Do I have evidence for that? No, other than the aircraft was unairworthy anyway but then there is no evidence to say that it was CFIT either. Room for doubt therefore. No Gross Negligence on the part of the deceased pilots therefore. As to Gross Negligence by others, elsewhere....