Erebus 25 years on

[PapaHotel6]

I have not posted on this forum before, but have been an avid scholar of this disaster the early 1980’s. Until I came here I believed that no-one could have studied this event in more depth than myself; however having read many of the insightful contributions here I’m now not so sure.

I have no conflict of interest to declare except for the fact I had chance meetings with both Mahon and Chippindale in the 1980s when I was a student.

I was an avid proponent of Mahon until I became a private pilot myself, studied more about the differences between high and low altitude navigation, IFR flying and more about Aviation in general and I now believe that the factors leading directly to this disaster were the fault of Capt. Collins. Other factors which have been well described were all secondary.

Why is this still important in 2016? Because many people are still living with a direct personal connection to the disaster. The Collins family have been militant in trying to clear Jim Collins’s name. In doing so, they sully the reputations of Chippindale, Gemmell and many others. But their loved ones too, carry the pain. The Collins family would serve their man far better by maintaining some quiet dignity.

A few points in no particular order.

- There should have been no need to arm the INS during VFR flight. The fact that Collins did so strongly suggests, as many others have done, that he was not truly VFR and was using the INS as some sort of “backup”.

- The INS is designed for navigating an aircraft at high altitude from one waypoint to the next. Nothing else. End of story. Think about it. If it was that crucial a navigation device – to the extent that a single wrong digit could crash an aircraft – do you think the crew would have been permitted to enter the data manually?

- Whether Jim Collins was a meticulous pilot, whether he used to put life jackets on his kids, whether he was in general a good person is all utterly irrelevant to whether he made errors on the day.

- Mahon suggests that Flight Engineer Brooks (himself a pilot) only became alarmed at the precise moment he said “I don’t like this”. I believe this to be fanciful in the extreme, and contrary to evidence.

- At 2000’ and not in VFR Collins should have climbed away immediately, not descended further to 1500’