Oldjet Jockey makes very valid points.
The USAF carried out their own enquiry some considerable time ago and, I believe, concluded that it was a tragic accident. They have since refused to release any information to anyone, including the wife of Lt Col Hyvonen, the flight leader. She has been in attendance to try to find any information about her husbands death.
There is a USAF Major in attendance at the Court Martial who will, no doubt, be quizzed next week on some of the details that Oldjet Jockey refers to; his responses will certainly appear on pprune.
I think that the above probably clears up your queries, Roger Dodge.
Sorry for the late report but, as warned, we all departed for home at the end of proceedings, around 1600 yesterday; 350 miles of snowy motorway later and (almost) all I needed was a dram and some kip.
Before I start I would like to point out that great care is taken to ensure that these reports are de-personalised and only contain information given in open court, i.e. in the public domain. Nothing heard either behind the scenes or in confidence has or will ever be included.
Yesterday was a long and frustrating day; at one point the court was adjourned for an hour and a quarter to enable the Prosecutor to photocopy documents that he had failed to provide for the Board. Later in the day the court was closed by the JA and we were all asked to leave. To a man, we all thought that he was considering the shambolick Prosecution case and that it might all end there. Our disappointment was obvious when court re-opened and the case for the Prosecution continued; the closure had been to allow the Board to try to understand the complexities of altimetry.
It is interesting to note, however, that everybody in the public area feels that the case appears more and more like a house of cards; 1 more big hit by the Defence QC, who is doing a magnificent job, will bring the whole case crashing down. We have been warned, however, that there is a possibility that it may drag on into a 3rd week! My view is that the Defence QC is so focused that once the weak and disorganised Prosecution case has been completed, proceedings will move at a much faster pace. There may not even be a case to answer if the Prosecutor has failed to prove the charges. The Defence team has an impressive number of big hitters waiting in the wings including a whole raft of eye witnesses, some of whom are aircraft enthusiasts, a senior RAF officer,(the ATC specialist) and a Brit F15 pilot from BAe.
The Prosecution only managed to call 2 witnesses yesterday, neither being the only big-hitter they have left. The first was a member of the RCC staff, to comment on the conversion of radar data provided by Scatcc Mil into lat./long to aid the production a radar plot. Included in the creation of the plot was time, distance, azimuth count pulse, flight level, altitude, ground speed and descent rate. The second witness was an aircrew member and advisor to the Board of Inquiry who drew the plot from the data converted by the RCC. It had been evident to the defence team that serious of errors and assumptions had been made in creating the plot; this was confirmed in open court by questions to the aircrew member. Having already documented his altimeter conversion error, he was asked to demonstrate his mathematics for the benefit of the court and he made the same mistake. Apart from the error of incorrectly converting flight level and QNH data, the pilot stated that in creating the radar plot he had projected the track of the aircraft forward, in a straight line, from the final radar contact position, which was normal procedure. However, as this put the crash site some 800 metres WEST of the summit, on his own volition, he moved the plot to the right, to arrive at the then-known crash site, which was approximately 500 metres EAST of the summit. In my opinion this is outrageous; he has clearly altered the evidence to fit the scenario. [A quote from Dick follows…] "Spot would have been stitched up like a kipper on evidence based mainly on - dare I say it - assumption ! Like the kipper, it stinks" !
Do bear in mind that it has been agreed that when the aircraft disappeared from radar, it was because they had faded below cover and not because they had already hit the mountain, although that happened shortly afterwards. The given descent rate of 5000 feet per minute at the last radar return, strongly suggests to me that the pilots were clear of cloud and in ground contact, hence the disappearance from radar. I know of no pilot who, in mountainous terrain, would descend at such a steep angle when in cloud, it just doesn’t make sense.
That’s it for now, it’s a long report but contains a great deal of vital information for your consumption. As Dick says, only now is the work of Spot’s support group over the last 2 years coming to fruition, (altimetry etc.). We haven't been able to post our work, as this would have been prejudicial to his case. As we are now approaching the time when we hear the defence witnesses, more of the work that has been done will come to light.
Sadly I’ll not be at the CM next week but Dick has kindly agreed to write a summary of proceedings and fax the report to me; I’ll post it on prune.
Watch your 6 everybody