RAF Denies Role in Norway Airliner Crash
 

MoD under pressure over Norway crash

The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) is under new pressure to release details of its operations in northern Norway on the day a passenger plane crashed, killing all 15 people on board.
An official parliamentary inquiry in Oslo has declared it intends to visit the UK to obtain detailed answers about RAF flights on 11 March, 1982.

On that date, more than 30 eyewitnesses have reported seeing military planes inside forbidden Cold War airspace in the area of arctic Finnmark, where the plane crashed.

Specifically, Norwegian investigators want to talk to former pilots of British Harrier jets from RAF Number One Squadron.

There has been frenzied speculation in the Norwegian press that one of those Harriers, on unauthorised manoeuvres near the Russian border, collided with the Twin Otter passenger plane and caused it to crash.

In a written answer to the House of Lords, the MoD admitted last year that an RAF aircraft was damaged that day. It said the plane had been "struck by a ricochet during a live-firing exercise".

But Norwegian staff on duty at the only nearby firing range insist no Harriers visited in the hours before the damaged plane landed.

And previously, in 1987, the British military attaché denied the aircraft had been damaged in any way.

Inconsistencies

In response to enquiries from BBC Radio 4's Crossing Continents programme, the MoD has admitted there were inconsistencies.

It announced that "an unfortunate error" had been made and reverted to its original version of events that there was "no damage" to the plane in question.

The about-turn is only likely to fuel allegations of a cover-up.


The programme has talked to a key witness, Grete Mortensen, a retired kindergarten teacher, whose house - in the fishing hamlet of Gamvik - overlooks the fjord where the plane went down.
She was with children playing on a hillside nearby when she heard "a terrible sound" which she took to have been a plane crashing into the sea.

"Moments later," she said she saw "a plane, definitely a military plane."

She played a 22-year-old tape-recording of the evidence she gave to investigators at the time, to prove her memory was not deceiving her and to demonstrate that her testimony was ignored.

The first two official investigations into the crash, now widely discredited, ruled out the possibility that there could have been any military planes in the area.

They put the accident down to a freakish mixture of pilot error, extreme turbulence, and damage caused to the tail of the aircraft by a suitcase flying out of the luggage hold.

Substantial damage

Crossing Continents also spoke to the Head of Norwegian Radar Operations, who described witnessing Harrier jets crossing into forbidden airspace in the east, shortly before the crash.


We will be thankful if the British authorities will answer our questions as soon as possible
Gaute Gregusson is leading the Oslo inquiry
And a ground technician on duty at a military airbase - where a Harrier landed shortly afterwards - told the programme he saw for himself substantial damage to its tail and fuselage.

Inger Luther, from Tromso - whose father was killed in the crash - is among those who insist "something must have happened suddenly and hard in the air to make this crash possible".

She said that she wanted honest answers from the British about whether one of their planes could have been involved. She told the programme:

"If you get the feeling that something is hidden from you, it is almost unbearable."

She made an appeal to anyone in the UK with new information to come forward now "to establish the truth forever".

So much new evidence is emerging, and so strong is the sense of anger among witnesses and relatives of the dead that a new inquiry has been set up in Oslo to re-examine the case.

The man in charge, Gaute Gregusson, told the BBC it was his "hope and intention" to visit the UK in the imminent future.

"First and foremost," he said, "we want to talk to the British pilots."

He added; "We will be thankful if the British authorities will answer our questions as soon as possible... They will be under a certain pressure."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programme...ts/3529175.stm

BBC Radio 4's Crossing Continents programme was broadcast today at 11am, and is repeated at 2030 on 8th March.

It should also be available to listen to via the Internet - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programme...ts/default.stm

What is meant by "forbidden Cold War airspace"?

This whole area is presumably Norwegian sovereign airspace with the normal requirements for transit. Is this just journalistic embelishment, or does the phrase have some signifcance?

Thanks in advance.

canuck:

Apparently airspace east of 24E longitude was classed as sensitive, since it was so close to the Russian border in Cold War days - hence the journalistic use of "forbidden".

If the Harriers were there (and from some of the programme which I heard today there is evidence that they were), they shouldn't have been.

Actually the east of 24E still applies, but the rules have changed a bit.

The rules stated that no NATO (non native) aircraft based in Norway can fly east of the 24. The total bann has been lifted for allied aircraft, but flight following by military CGI is required when flying further east. There is still a cutoff for foreign ac, at 27E or something like that.

On antoher note, most people in the ATC business her north thinks the conspiracy theories are utter b@ll@cks. (I have read some of the logs, and the distance/endurance calculations mean that there is no way the Gr.3 made it up there.)

The parliament appointed AIB released it's report today, all 500 odd pages.

The original cause of the crash is stil valid, and the "Harrier-theory" have been squashed, concluding that many eyewitnesses have been a bit "creative".

(I allways wondered how old ma and pa fisherman could ident a Harrier 1 mile away, and remember the time 20 years later........)


...back to reading......

...

Ah, but remember that at the time HMS Invincible was in the area conducting Exercise Northern Lights.

ALL movements of MIL (as well as civ)aircraft i the north of Norway was looked at, and Invincible was on station in Vestfjorden (Between Bodø and Evenes), and could not have made it that far. Allso the ships log was available to the commission, and they had no fixed wing assets airborne.

Sadly the locals in the Mehamn area are not satisfied, but then they never will be. The most disturbing thing, is that Major Gavin (R), Master Controller at CRC Sørreisa have lied to the AAIB and the commisson, as well as in a TV documentary. (Claiming that the former director of the Norwgian AAIB, Lt Gen Willhem Mohr (R), instructed him to cover up the incident, when the AAIB visited CRP Honingsvåg in 1987 when Gavin was the OC there. The problem was, that Mohr was not present at that occasion......)


That civilians make mistakes regarding eyewitness accounts is understandable, but a officer fabricating a story is rather disturbing. :8

You mean a bit like coughing during a TV game show ?