Beagle:
1. There was insufficient cause for Wratten and Day to pin their finding of Gross Negligence on the 2 pilots.
2. Various senior people allegedly ran roughshod over their own airworthiness regulations whilst trying to bring the HC2 into service.
Now, one might consider that 2 may well have been instrumental in the accident, but most folk simply accept that confirmation of 1 is the more important.
I am very aware that those who have fought the good fight from the very start have had one aim and one aim only, to overturn the finding of the AOC and the AOC-in-C and to thus restore the reputations of the two deceased pilots. That was, and is, a laudable and very understandable cause, given the outrageous injustice done in the name of the Royal Air Force to two deceased officers both of whom were highly professional pilots. The reason why that campaign failed time and time again despite support from the Scottish FAI, the House of Lords, the House of Commons and even the Secretary of State for Defence of the time is summarised succinctly by you in item 2. above.
It was not until the gross lack of airworthiness of ZD576 and its sister Chinook Mk2's as Released to Service was revealed in this very thread that some explanation for the bizarre and obdurate attitude of the MOD to what to most (!) everyone else seemed blatant injustice, as clear as a pikestaff, began to make sense. Now if it were only the reputations at stake of what are now retired senior RAF Air Officers, there might be some merit in your call to sort out 1, before moving onto 2. But 2. is the problem. 2 would mean that the whole UK Military Airworthiness process was criminally compromised at the highest levels. 2 would mean that the MOD cannot be left to self regulate airworthiness while acting as operator and accident investigator as well. Far more than Nimrod, Hercules, Tornado or Sea King, Mull shows that the MOD as Judge and Jury of its own actions will convict everytime, but never itself! The MAA and the MAAIB are its puppets. I'm sorry but this is far to serious a matter of life and death to delude ourselves to the contrary. I bore you all time after time with my mantra that:
Self-Regulation never works, and in Aviation it Kills!
for one reason only, it is a self evident truth! Unless and until Military Airworthiness Regulation is wrested from the MOD, more avoidable accidents will kill more people. That does not even make sense in military terms, let alone the needless grief and misery that come with those accidents. With respect to you Beags, and others who are so like minded, you are wrong. The imperative is 2, for if that be true many more lives remain at risk and we must succeed where Mr. Haddon-Cave QC failed. Then we can put right past injustices.