Chinook - Still Hitting Back 3 (Merged)

[ExGrunt]

if the first 80 waypoints were already used it could be that they were all of the various HLS's within the province

Just reading through the RACAL report - It does look like the other waypoints were the registered HLS. The scheme then was that HLS were grouped by colour and then a three digit reference. So the now gone Bessbrook was Red 850, which when written down was abbreviated to R850.

After reading the report, I interpret it that, it shows the data recorded when power was lost was (GPS): 55 18.61N 05 47.80W Altitude 665ft +/-50ft. I just checked the map and at that point ground level is 623ft.

IOW when the power failed the aircraft was still airborne.

You may recall from reading the AAIB report that the first impact was between the cliff lip and the rear and lower fuselage and that 'many of the components of interest were found not to have received the deformation and/or gross shock loading at initial impact...'. That seems to create reasonable doubt that the power to the Supertans would fail on first impact.

And just as another wrinkle Mr Murchie reported the sound of the aircraft disappearing just before the impact.

More inconsistency with the 'official' version.

EG