The BoI and Airworthiness
As I have mentioned on this thread several times before, if you do a search on the BoI Report and the Reviewing Officers' Comments for the words "airworthy" or "airworthiness" or even "release to service" you will not find them. There is absolutely no evidence that the BoI either by design/direction or just a plain lack of competence looked at the underlying airworthiness issues at all - there is certainly no confirmation in the BoI report that the aircraft was either airworthy (as is now being claimed by MOD) or even serviceable (as is being claimed by most other people who wish to blame the pilots). I can only suggest that MOD are deliberately misleading us (and themselves?) by saying that these earlier reports were made available to the BoI - if they had been I cannot believe that any responsible and effective BoI would have ignored them.
As further evidence that MOD did not wish the Boscombe Down issues to surface, and certainly did not wish to draw attention to, or provide, any of the critical letters (Software, OC RWTS, 6 June 94 Supt of Engineering) then read the request for legal advice for the MOD Team at the Sherriff's FAI which completely ignores them - being cynical I have to assume that even the MOD's legal team were deliberately not given the full facts either as they would then have had to disclose them to the other side.
Rifkind was right in his comments today - MOD does not need new evidence they just need properly to assess the evidence they have (which to be fair to the BoI now includes documents that they do not seem to have been given or to seek) - as I think was pointed out back in the engineering assessment of the BoI back in 2003!
JB