caz:
You consistently fail to acknowledge in your Posts regarding the Investigating Board that it consisted of 2 experienced Chinook Pilots and a Chinook Engineer. They were well versed in the problems that had arisen during the introduction of the Mk2. They were unable to find any evidence that the pilots were NOT in control of the aircraft prior to impact. On the contrary, the aircraft attitude at impact indicated a belated attempt at an escape manouvre.
You could no doubt say the same of the Hercules and Nimrod BoIs, caz, and not withstanding Olive's default MOD "blame the crew" for its own failures, neither identified the cause of both accidents - lack of airworthiness. It took HM's Coroners to do their job for them, just as it took the HoL to do the job of this one. Accident Investigation is an integral part of the Regulatory Process, and yet separated from the Regulator (the CAA) in Civil Aviation to ensure complete objectivity. My abiding image of an AAIB Inspector is of him standing on the rim of a crater in Lincolnshire. He wears an old tweed jacket with leather patches sewn at the elbows. He sucks on an empty pipe and declares, " It was fully stalled and yet there was at least intermediate power being produced". He is a professional, interested only in discovering what caused the accident and how to prevent it in future. OK, my image is set in my time, a long gone era of which we now know little, but come forward to the BA777 LHR accident and we see his modern counterpart bent on exactly the same objective task. As I have said before, if he and his colleagues were instead "experienced BA pilots and engineers" co-opted by the Chief Pilot to a "BA BoI" the chances of a professional and objective investigation would be minimal. Self-Regulation always fails. In aviation it kills. The failure of self-regulation in UK Military Airworthiness and Aircraft Accident Investigation has cost at least 60 lives if you include, as I do, this accident (29 dead), Sea King (7 dead), Hercules (10 dead) and Nimrod (14 dead). Time to move Airworthiness Provision and Accident Investigation away from the MOD and RAF to a separate and independent MAA and MAAIB as a matter of great urgency.
PS. As regards what the BoI was able or unable to find, see my posts above. I contend that for the most part they were not even looking!