AB,
Again....you just do not know what you are saying...
The US Army don't do intensive flying like N Sea ops. By the time of the accident the BAH fleet had several times the hours of the next highest in the US inventory. So yes, I think BAH knew a bit more than them about intensive and offshore Chinook ops. Don't you?
I suppose my Army Flight Records are all a fabrication then....and my first hand experience on the aircraft...along with my North Sea experience bar me from having a basis upon which to draw my obervations.
We flew the machines approaching two hundred hours per month under combat conditions....maintained them in the open....and carried loads much more stressful than did the BAH aircraft.
The Army does not operate a system of maintenance as do Civilian Operators and the aircraft do not accrue the airframe hours per individual airframe...but when one has 500 of the things....and over Ten Years experience operating them....there is a corporate knowledge that transcends a fleet operation of a mere handful.
The 234 is different from the CH-47 in exactly the same way the 61N and Sea King differ....only by degrees.
What did not change was the usual British institutional arrogance towards accepting advice from anyone else no matter how qualified the source.
That reluctance is of historical record, noted, and well known. The sayingis "Teach a Brit today....and he will tell you how to do it tomorrow!" That has never changed.
It also appears alive and well within your posts.