Another example was the
USMC F/A18D crash at Miramar in 2008 - IIRC the engineering officer who signed off the plane was dismissed with loss of pension, and the officer who ordered the pilot to return to Miramar (rather than eject) was also "relieved" of his duties.
Cirrus,
This is not accurate; 4 Officers not including the pilot were relieved of their duties after the incident, to the best of my knowledge none of them recieved any loss of pension although if that was true of any of them it would have been the AMO who left the service immediately after the crash.
Additionally there was never any suggestion that the correct course of action was to order the pilot to eject, the 'accident chain' in this instance was very long and complex.
The CO was relieved of command and subsequently retired, the other 2 officers were given negative fitreps and moved to other posts / Sqn.
To remain on topic, they were not fired because of the mistakes of the Pilot in Command (and as such held accountable for their subordinate's error) but were held directly accountable for their own mistakes as cited by the board.
It is my firm belief that had the same incident occured under the same circumstances in the RAF the results would have been similar.
Interestingly, the Pilot in Command kept his wings and is currently completing his F/A-18 training on another Sqn.
Adour