Leon
I totally agree with your understanding of the reason for the grounding however
I know that a lot of the VGS staff are involved in the civilian gliding movement and would have been able to point the RAF in the direction of expert help with the recovery program long before the RAF worked it out for themselfs.
It must of been clear from long before the grounding that the current contractor was falling well short of the mark, I was told tails of composite repair bays going unused, staff refusing to do independent inspections and gliders with minor damage being written for years before the grounding. While I did at the time suspect that this was a lot of hot air unfortunately it has come to pass that the rumours had some foundation.
If I who am on the very outer edges of both the gliding & air cadet movements had been getting these murmurings how is it the RAF management missed them ? Have they never heard of management by walking about ? ( this is when you walk about your bailiwick talking to those at the coal face to find out what is actually going on rather than the middle management view ).
A good communication path between the VGS upper management and the volunteers who run the day to day operation might well have caught this problem while it was just a few gliders that failed to meet airworthiness standards and long before the fleet grounding was the only option.