RAF AIR CONTROLLER CLEARED OVER PILOTS’ DEATHS
PA News
An RAF air traffic controller was cleared today of the deaths of two US fighter pilots whose planes crashed into a mountain during a snowstorm.
The jury of six senior RAF officers took just over six-and-a-half hours to acquit Flight Lieutenant Malcolm Williams.
Williams, 47, of RAF Leuchars, Fife, was also found not guilty of an alternative charge of professional negligence at a court martial in Helensburgh, Argyll and Bute.
mfl Flt Lt Williams’s wife Sue and sister Barbara breathed a sigh of relief and buried their heads in their hands when the verdict was delivered.
The case against him lasted 22 days and was the longest and most expensive in RAF history.
Flt Lt Williams is believed to have been the first UK military controller in living memory to be court-martialled in connection with a fatal air crash.
He was charged with causing the deaths of Lieutenant Colonel Kenneth Hyvonen, 40, and Captain Kirk Jones, 27.
It was alleged Williams told the Americans to fly below 6,500ft when they requested the “minimum vectoring altitude” – a US term unfamiliar to the RAF at the time.
The two pilots died when their F15s crashed into Ben Macdui in the Cairngorms on March 26 2001.
Williams had denied the charge.
The US pilots were on a low-flying exercise from RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk when they disappeared.
Mountain rescue teams battled through white-out conditions to find the wreckage near the summit of the Highland mountain, the second highest in the UK.
The bodies of Lt Col Hyvonen and Capt Jones were recovered within days.
The hearing had heard how Flt Lt Williams returned to work on the day of the crash after two weeks of compassionate leave following the death of his father.
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