No, John, I'm not saying that at all. Perhaps we even agree and have been at cross-purposes. Everything you say about those major crimes is true. If we can package that up and put it to one side, we can go on to talk about military aircraft crashes.
My 1983 example was intended to illustrate how things used to work. We, the Board, turned up to find a pile of wreckage on MoD property, and two pilots in hospital. The police knew it had happened, but merely logged it. Now, at that moment, it is non-fatal and we go about our investigation. A crash scene is NOT, back then, a crime scene. We find a defective component. Has a crime been committed? We think "No", so we don't inform any police RAF or Civvy. We could, in theory have missed evidence of sabotage.
Now, the crew. In fact the crew recovered, but suppose after a week, one of them had died. We now have a fatal accident, or do we have a crime? The board will come to a conclusion, probably pass it up the line, and the decision re. the police will be made. The evidence has now been removed, so if we want the police to investigate, that may be a problem.
I don't want to drag this out, glojo, but can you see what I'm driving at? The difference is nowadays, the police DO assume the crash scene is the crime scene and so their investigation starts immediately.
Does that clarify things?
Keith
Edited to add: If we go back to the '60s, there were so many Hunters, Meteors, Swifts, etc dropping out of the sky that the police would have been overwhelmed if they'd had to assume a crime every time. That is one reason why the assumption used to be "Accident. Leave it to the RAF."
Last edited by keithl; 10th Jul 2012 at 16:03.