Walter's Disappointment
Walter,
Re your 6866. I am sorry my words disappointed you - they were not mine but the words of two of the Superintendents at Boscombe Down responsible for the Release to Service trials of the Chinook. I did not point them out in this thread because I thought they gave a cause for the accident (although some of the subsequent postings by people better qualified than me to comment raise some interesting points), since because unlike you or the Reviewing Officers I am not trying to speculate on a reason. Like everyone else, including you, I don't know - and that is the reason for this thread - to right the injustice of the Gross Negligence verdict based on speculation and not facts.
However, part of the "facts" which show just how unjust this verdict was, and which MOD's own "no new evidence" intransigence has continued to reinforce, was the flawed processes leading to the introduction to service of the Mk2. Thus what I was trying to do, obviously too obtusely, in my post was to show yet another area (ie the BD reports which were an essential part of the CA Interim Release Recommendations) missed by what in my view was a totally inadequate investigation by the BoI process, and to provide yet another "fact", albeit possibly minor, that forms part of the wider picture of doubt on the airworthiness of the aircaft at that time, and the poor judgement displayed by management at all levels (but not the pilots who wanted a Mk1 - so they did not seem to have an inkling of your "secret" mission either) in its use for this high profile sortie in terms of both the fleet clearances and the individual airworthiness and even servicability problems which were displayed by ZD 576.
If you would like another unmentioned "fact" from the BD reports on which I have not seen any comments from the BoI try this:
Transmission Debris Screens - A crewman must inspect the Transmission Debris Screen magnetic indicators on the Maintenance Panel at least every 5 minutes during flight unless other flight safety requirements take priority.
This wasn't just in BD Reports it is in the Interim RTS at AL1 which was extant at the time of the accident. I have never seen this requirement mentioned in the BoI (if I recall correctly the DECU connector check every 15 minutes (which was based, inter alia, on an incident on the trials aircraft), wasn't brought out either until Robert Burke mentioned it.) No, I am not suggesting that this was a potential cause of the accident - the AAIB did look in detail at this area and it appears to be clear - but would you put your wife and kids in an aircraft which required such checks? Were these checks even being carried out?
What, in my view, is clear from reading the plethora of detail in the BD Reports is that they should have formed part of any "proper" BoI investigations into such a high profile accident on a newly converted aircraft, and I still wonder why this was not the case - words which spring to my mind include "inadequate", "incompetent", "directed", "presumption" and a few others less fit to print! But I don't know which one might apply.
JB