The Yeovil Merlin prang
 

A bit over a decade ago, Westlands lost a Merlin prototype flying out of Yeovil; from memory it was a failure of a tailrotor linkage due to various design and parts control issues. The whole crew got out using personal parachutes.

I recall a year or two afterwards a very good presentation being given by somebody senior at WHL on the lessons learned in managing that accident - covering issues such as what to do with other airborne aircraft, involving the company PR department, and so-on.

Does anybody have a copy of that presentation, or any written paper associated with it? I'm revising my own organisation's incident response plan and would like to take the lessons learned there into account.

G

Genghis, I recall the paper – excellent stuff.
It may have been given at one or more of the SETP conferences, possibly at a European meeting in London. A quick search of SETP web papers found nothing. In addition, it probably pre-dates the Flight Test Safety Committee web records.
As alternatives, I recall tp meetings at Bristol and BD in that period. I am searching my archives – so far without success.

Many thanks for looking SafetyPee.

I have a vague feeling that it might have been presented at something under the auspices of D.Flying(PE) [or whatever they were called at the time!], does that ring any bells?

G

Try contacting Colin Hague who was CTP at the time; he's a very nice bloke.

You might try and get in touch with Don McClean who was flying the a/c at the time. I don't have his details anymore, but get in touch with the Army Air Corps Association at Middle Wallop and they should be able to help......

Best of luck

Anthony :ok:

Good call - SETP still list a WHL Email address for Don, so I've dropped him a note.

G