Safety Case - the fact that the people in the USN Fighter Weapons School feel the need to refer to it as Top Gun is exactly the attitude I mean - the 'I'm better than you' arrogance requires a level of egotism that is not healthy in a cockpit but is common place in the military - unfortunately.
Since this supreme self-belief is not only condoned but encouraged by the upper echelons it is not surprising that some pilots will take it to the limit and venture beyond theirs.
I am certainly not going to defend the RAF in this tragic case, many events had conspired to leave the Puma force with a high dilution of experience and a catch 22 situation where new boys couldn't be trained up enough to do the operational tasking because the rest were working too hard on Ops to spare hours or people.
So some inexperienced guys were left in UK to do noddy tasking, unfortunately with inadequate supervision. It all comes down to poor leadership and a system that promotes the wrong people who seem
incapable of leading by good example.
I do believe that if the release of the CVR tapes helps the other junior pilots out there to realise what is and isn't acceptable and prevents another sensless loss of life then it will have been justified. It's not nice for the families but I expect they wish someone had played the crew a similar tape at some point in their training.