Tench Report
Tapper's Dad - can I first join you in remembering the victims of an accident that was caused by so many failures in the RAF's airworthiness system and in learning the lessons from the investigation of previous incidents and accidents.
I am reluctant to cross thread boundaries and raise other accidents that took place before the so-called improvements in the BoI system (the main one being, as I understand it, that they no longer formally allocate blame, but then deal with this “out of sight” as a disciplinary/administrative issue – but I am happy to be corrected if I am wrong). However, the fact that the investigation of Air Accidents, and indeed the overall regulation and application of airworthiness standards, remains within the Command Chain, and hence potentially subject to interference, not least from the lack of money, still seems to me to be a basic weakness of the system - albeit I acknowledge that the RN (and I think the Army) has had a more professionally qualified and experienced approach to the investigation of accidents for some considerable time. The quote that the BBC used this morning from me on R4 was not given in the context of this news item (it was part of an interview for the recent File on 4 programme), and I am disappointed that in terms of using the Tench Report as an example of how MOD (I guess with every encouragement from the higher echelons of the RAF at the time) “buries” recommendations it does not like, the reporter took no notice of either my concerns at to the use of my comments, even though they are totally correct, in a different context, or of my suggested examples of why the Tench Report was so important.
When Angus Stickler contacted me to say he was doing this piece I suggested that a comparison of the BoI outcome of two accidents that took place within just a few weeks of each other, namely the Chinook on the Mull and the Tornado in Glen Ogle would provide a perfect example of why Tench was so important in terms of fairness and justice – as well as in terms of learning the right lessons from every accident. This, in summary, is what I suggested to Angus:
.... that a comparison of the final verdicts between the BoI for the Chinook (crashed Jun 94 ) and Glen Ogle Tornado (crashed Sep 94) verdicts by the same Senior Reviewing Officers (SROs) (made within a few days of each other) offered a classic example of the "failings" of the BoI system. In the case of the Chinook the SROs despite having no ADR or CVR data available, and ignoring the comments from the AAIB and the airworthiness doubts of their own flight test organisation at Boscombe Down, find "Gross Negligence". In the case of the Tornado there is “no doubt whatsoever” that the actions of the pilot (for indeterminate reasons) caused the crash with loss of crew and aircraft - yet in the extracts from the BoI in the public domain, the SROs find that any consideration of human failings would be "academic and fruitless". Why this major inconsistency of approach except perhaps to "protect" the system and RAF command chain from criticism in both cases. This is a classic example of why the BoI and indeed the military airworthiness authority should be removed from the Command chain and its potential self-serving influence! We did point this out some years ago with one of the members of the Mull Group sending a comparison letter to the S of S - without a response as far as I am aware.
I understand that the BBC producer was reluctant to use these examples, as they took place so long ago – I can only say that the basis of the item, the Tench Report, was even earlier, and I am sad that what was a generally good piece of journalism did not, in my view, really get down to the wider issues and left itself open to be fairly easily rebuffed by an “economical with the truth” MOD, especially on a day when this was a long way down the news agenda as far the public would be concerned.
JB