They were hiding pulse;
Why the Defence Secretary should overturn the Chinook negligence verdict
SIR – Your leading article (January 5) suggests that the RAF may be “trying to hide something”. This is challenged by Air Chief Marshals Graydon and Alcock (Letters, January 7), who ask how something could be hidden for so long.
Well, something still is hidden. Since the Chinook disaster in 1994, the RAF and MoD have covered up an MoD Boscombe flight-test report on the helicopter’s (1993) engine computer system Fadec. This is new evidence because it is “airworthiness critical” and unexamined by any inquiry.
The RAF board of inquiry did not examine the Boscombe report, and it could not find the cause. Two air marshals subsequently blamed the dead pilots for gross negligence.
The Boscombe report has never been published. No subsequent inquiry – judicial, parliamentary or professional – has evaluated it. Not even the defence minister at the time, Malcolm Rifkind, knew the contents of the report.
Leaks suggested that, before the crash, Chinook ZD576’s engine computer system was unacceptable to Boscombe’s engineers and test pilots. It was prone to uncommanded power fluctuations, including sudden revving up.
Was the crew of ZD576, when about to make a scheduled left turn away from high ground, suddenly distracted by an engine run-up? We shall never know. It is possible. But the RAF did not give the pilots the benefit of any doubt. They found gross pilot negligence. Under RAF rules, only “absolutely no doubt whatsoever” allowed a finding of negligence.
If they were worried, and still are, about what the Boscombe Fadec report would reveal about their decision to allow this aircraft to carry VVIPs, no matter. The Secretary of State can set aside the negligence verdict with a stroke of his pen without further cost or inquiries, redeeming the honour of the RAF and, above all, of the pilots concerned.
Michael Ramsden
Welwyn, Hertfordshire
SIR – What is the attraction of conspiracy theories? President Kennedy was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald. The Chinook pilots flew into high ground in bad weather.
Flt Lt R.H. Statham RAF (retd)
Langport, Somerset