PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - A Sad Waste of Life - Lynx Crash 2014 Kandahar.
Old 16th Jul 2015, 18:50
  #24 (permalink)  
Melchett01
 
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Darling - where are we?
Posts: 2,580
Received 7 Likes on 5 Posts
KenV

I've deliberately refrained from comment so far, but you really need to read the official inquiry report in Wrathmonk's second post rather than the Daily Mail article in the first post.

Just because it occurred in an operational theatre doesn't mean that the pilot didn't make mistakes. Mistakes happen, both in peace time and in war time and the official inquiry report makes it very clear what to their expert military judgement they believe occurred on that fateful day based on experience, radar traces and CVR data. You're right in so much as

Performing "a low G descent" into an airfield in a combat zone is standard procedure and ensuring the passengers are properly strapped in in the event of such a maneuver is highly professional.
But this wasn't a decent into an operational airfield, it was a air-ground gunnery shoot where the final pass went tragically wrong when a whole host of mistakes and contributory and aggravating factors combined into an unrecoverable situation. Pointing out those mistakes and factors is far from disrespectful if it prevents a similar occurrence in future; let that be the only good thing to come out of this terrible incident.
Melchett01 is offline