bastOn, I'm still confused as to the point that you are making. I maintain that the aircraft was unairworthy, and had been for all the approx 50 hours that it was a Mk2. I do not know if it was serviceable that day, presumably the engineers who declared it to be so and the captain who accepted it as such believed it to be so. Do you know differently? There is little that the engineers or pilots could know or do about the airworthiness, other than a feeling of unease that seemed to permeate the crewrooms then by all accounts. How do you know that the aircraft that you flew/fly are airworthy? How would you tell? You may well worry, but in the end you have to put your trust in the manufacturers, Test Pilots, Civil Servants and Air Staff. In this case, as with the Nimrod and the Hercules, that trust was betrayed. Whereas with the other two aircraft some extenuating circumstances might be claimed by those responsible, here there are surely none. This aircraft was rushed into service with unseemly haste and against the express protests of BD. That the RAF then found the pilots to be Grossly Negligent, with no proof, beggars belief when it was party to the wilful negligence exhibited by the CoC in forcing this unairworthy type on the aircrews. A great wrong has been done here, probably an illegal wrong at that.