Cazatou
You wrote:
it should have read that the forecast weather " was suitable for the flight, but would have precluded flight in accordance with VFR in the vicinity of the Mull of Kintyre."
Therefore the Chinook should have been at or above Safety Altitude as it approached the Mull and should only have descended to low level again once it was demonstrably certain that the weather conditions permitted flight in accordance with VFR.
The crew did not so do - with tragic results.
Just because the forecast indicates that conditions in the vicinity of the Mull might preclude VFR flight over the land is no reason to approach the area at or above Safety Altitude.
It is perfectly proper to approach such an area whilst flying VFR with a view to simply avoiding the bad weather with suitable lateral separation. There is no evidence to suggest that this is not what the crew of ZD576 were doing and the fact that the aircraft crashed into a cloud/fog-covered hill does not disprove that they were trying to fly
around the weather when something caused the aircraft to diverge to the right and impact the hillside.
It is not logical to assume that, because the aircraft hit the ground in IMC conditions, the pilots must have wilfully flown the aircraft there. Nobody knows what happened and it is extremely unreasonable, lacking definitive evidence, to assume that the accident must have been caused by experienced aircrew ignoring one of the basic tenets of airmanship. Sure, it's a
possibility, but no more than that and, IMHO, the more we hear about the (un)airworthiness of the Mk2 at that time, the less credible a possibility it becomes, especially when the required standard of proof is "beyond any doubt whatsoever".