Originally Posted by pulse1
Another letter supporting the CAS in the Telegraph today (sorry can't find a link)
Here it is. (Scroll down about a third of a screen).
Chinook crash revisited
SIR – The current chief of the air staff has made his views clear (Letters, January 6) following your leading article on the Chinook crash (January 5). That successive CASs have reached the same conclusion after independent and exhaustive reviews, as have ministers, civil servants and senior military aircrew, can hardly be called stubborn; “consistent” might be a more balanced term.
You suggest we may be “trying to hide something”. Could something have been hidden for all these years when leaks from Government departments are a daily occurrence?
As for the so-called new evidence reported by the BBC, in comprehensive responses to reports and submissions by a House of Lords committee, the House of Commons defence committee and Mull of Kintyre campaigners, the RAF – through the MoD – has explained precisely why the finding of gross negligence was unavoidable. It remains so and can only be set aside if the facts are ignored.
Documents dated July 2002 and December 2008 address all issues raised in the campaigners’ various endeavours (including, of course, the Fadec computer system), and painstakingly explain why they are all irrelevant. In a nutshell, had the pilots not knowingly contravened the strict regulations that govern flight at low level, they could not possibly have crashed on the Mull of Kintyre as they did.
This conclusion stems from evidence which is absolutely clear to the open-minded. One can hardly imagine such doughty politicians as George Robertson and John Reid, just two examples, having the wool pulled over their eyes.
Why would the Royal Air Force wish to blame itself for this accident if there was the slightest possibility that technical fault might have been responsible?
You suggest that “institutionalised resistance” might be involved. For institutional resistance read consistent objectivity. Our duty was to acknowledge our failing and try to ensure that it never happened again.
Air Chief Marshal Sir Michael Graydon
Chief of the Air Staff 1992-97
Air Chief Marshal Sir Michael Alcock
Chief Engineer, RAF, 1991-96
London SW1