ZD576 was the first time a BoI had been made public and the first time the management process of the RAF was therefore opened to scrutiny.
It was also a shocking tragedy killing so many people who were part of the defence establishment, including the then head of the Army’s force reconnaissance unit as well as the deputy head of MI5.
A grim own goal for the RAF upper echelons to deal with from CAS Graydon on down and one that undoubtedly needed explaining. Sir William felt his rank required a sense of leadership that a more junior officer, the board president Andy Pulford, could not be expected to muster.
Having read that Pulford’s inquiry had concluded only a possible cause based on the known evidence, Sir William took matters into his own hands together with Sir John Day.
“… it was a prerogative that Air Vice-Marshal Day and I had to send it back to the Board of Inquiry and to draw that to their attention and to say, "Come on, you have to be more positive than this." We did not do so because this was Wing Commander Pulford's first Board of Inquiry, this was the largest peacetime tragedy that the Royal Air Force had suffered. There was enormous loss of life. And I personally would not impose that judgement upon a young Wing Commander. That was the responsibility of senior commanders.”
When I heard Sir William explain this to the Lords I felt for the first time I understood what had happened inside the RAF/MoD to allow the negligence finding to arise. Such certainty in this case is surely an unjustified overreach in part because Sir William had told everyone in his original reviewing comments there was inevitably a degree of speculation as to the cause because of the circumstances of the accident. Little wonder so much confusion remains.

Use the ignore button......Use the ignore button......Use the ignore button......Use the ignore button......Use the ignore button......
Oh yes, I forgot,
Do you know with absolutely no doubt whatsoever what caused ZD576 to crash on the Mull all those years ago?

Good to see that you have an open mind still on this matter jayteeto. If this incident had occured in VMC in open terrain then this would obviously be a questionable verdict. The fact that the aircraft impacted at high speed in IMC begs the question what was it doing in that point of space at that speed in those conditions? Claiming that this was due to a technical malfunction is stretching credulity to far, they should'nt have been there. You are not looking for justice here but a technical acquital, the question will always be there however.

No, Courtney, justice! This verdict flew in the face of natural justice, and the RAF's own guidelines. The more intriguing question is rather what are you looking for? You come on to this thread 13 years down the line and just before an SoS review of the case. Your contributions have been basically to rerun the tired and discredited cliches ex MOD and Messrs W and D. Once again they have been dealt with patiently and politely by those who post here. You in return do not answer their one fundamental question in return: Do you know with absolutely no doubt what caused ZD576 to crash on the Mull all those years ago?

As I predicted Courtney will simply not answer the question as neither Caz or JP before him EVER did, so I ask Courtney again

"Do you know with absolutely no doubt whatsoever what caused ZD576 to crash on the Mull all those years ago?"

Now man up and answer what is a simple and direct question which requires a simple and direct YES or NO answer......................courage of your convictions etc etc :rolleyes:

No I don't know absolutely what happened, but the evidence is damning. Perhaps you gentlemen will answer the point I have made, what were they doing there? No malfunction of the aircraft can explain their actions.

Courtney

and therefore you agree, that under the rules in place at the time, they should not have been found negligent. :D

The rest is opinion and, IMHO, should therefore have been (and remain) non-admissable. The crash may have been caused by a technical fault, may have been pilot error, or may even have been green men with laser death rays - the point is nobody (including you) knows for certain.

Brian

I raise my hat to your patience, courtesy and all round good manners with the way you deal with those who do not hold the same views. There are plenty of others on other more recent tragedies that should take note. I truly wish you the best for 2008 and hope that this is the year when the battle is finally won.

Regards

W

Wrathmonk, I was about to respond again to Courtney, but you have beaten me to it in timing and content, so I shall instead respond to you. Well said, Sir :D, all I can add is a sincere "hear hear" to your New Year wishes to Brian. He is indeed an inspiration and example to us all, his politeness is not a sign of weakness, MOD et al, for he can also be very, very irritating! :)
Happy New Year then to all who post on this thread, let us hope as Wrathmonk says that 2008 will be its final year! :ok:

I would have thought it pretty obvious that I don't agree. The rules are absurd, it's your turn to answer the question fellas, what were they doing there? Oh, nearly forgot. How kind of you all to be so patient with us upstarts who dare to venture on to your hallowed web site and ask awkward questions.

You are perfectly entitled to that opinion Courtney, and good luck with getting them changed. In the meantime they are the rules. What were they doing there? I don't know. You don't know. Messrs W & D don't know. The MOD doesn't know. The only ones who did know can't tell us.
Oh, nearly forgot, I don't see you so much as an upstart, more of a down start I would say, looking down on the rest of us on this thread, the House of Lords, Scottish FAI, ex SoS, et al with the same disdain as does the MOD. You wouldn't hail from there would you?

No Chugalug2 it won't do. They were indisputably there and managed to impale themselves on a rock face, grossly negligent. 'More of a down start I would say', you should know better than make such facile renarks at your age, also I don't think this complies with the awfully polite nature of this web site.

Bearing in mind the "facts" as they appear, namely a lack of positive evidence to the contrary and putting out the MOD line, whilst hiding behind a cloud, courtney must hail from within those same walls.

Some of the younger readers may not get the “little green men” digs that some of the old lags use – so I thought I would explain it.
Here is a quote from somewhere on the web:
<<Meakoning was a Vietnam war practice of using false radio homing beacons to lure helicopters off course where they could be shot down. It is a commingling (sic) of the words Mekon (river delta) Beacon, and Taccan (sic) - a pre GPS air navigation system. >>
So the concept has been sufficiently present in the US psyche for them to coin a term for it.
How does this suggest “little green men”? – well, the old lags presumably read Dan Dare comic strips in their youth wherein the arch enemy was a little green man called the Meakon (not sure about the spelling, I was more into the Beano).
And why would they be running around on the Mull? – the section of US Navy SEALS that was stationed at Macrihanish at the time, and who had PRC112 sets issued to a man, were known as a dirty tricks section.
(No offence to any of our American friends, we can get pretty dirty ourselves when the need arises.)
If you had wanted to demonstrate the new (to the RAF) personnel locator system (and they were using an appropriate tactical call sign for such an exercise) you could not have wanted for better help on the ground – very accommodating and discrete chaps, these.
So a witty riposte to the “beacon theory” – or a puerile distraction to a relevant point of circumstantial evidence?

Sorry to disappoint you Walter, but you are wrong again.

Meaconing was used in WWII ie before Vietnam.

Meaconing (Coined from the term ‘Masking Beacon’) was developed by the Post Office and was a system of denying Direction Finding (DF) bearings to enemy aircraft. Briefly this was achieved by picking up the signals from German aircraft calling their DF stations for a ‘fix’, passing the signals to a transmitter and then re-radiating them. Special aerial arrangements and phasing equipment was used at our receiving sites to eliminate the local transmitter signal and leave only the aircraft signal in control. The bearing was of course destroyed by the double signal received by the DF station, and being on exactly the same frequency the German receiving station was unaware of the deception.

'Meaconing' (not 'meakoning') is nothing to do with the Mekong Delta in Vietnam. Neither does it have anything to do with the 'Mekon' of Dan Dare fame.

The word is derived from 'Masking beacon'.

It was developed during WW2 by the British Post Office, to interfere with German navigation systems. Also used during the Cold War to try to entice NATO aircraft to enter Eastern Bloc airspace.

You beat me to it, ZH875!

But do let Weird Wally carry on amusing us all with his idea of USN SEALs scurrying about the Mull with their wacky little wirelesses....:rolleyes:

Thanks for reinforcing that the concept was already well understood.
And very easy to put into practice in modern times thanks to those "wacky" PRC112 sets.
This incident was not amusing at all - try putting your experience into the chartwork and interprtation of the instrument settings and come up with a better explanation - or are you just here to argue like fish wives? (Now I'm showing my age.)

Walter, enough, for goodness sake! The homing kit was not fitted to the aircraft. Why can't you believe eye witnesses?

I am not really supposed to offer an opinion, but occasionally I do when it seems, with my mod hat on, that people apparently refuse to accept the meaning of words and go round in circles attempting to change the meaning of a word and creating angst. Forunately, to date it has all been controlled angst.

So, for those who require the meaning of the word doubt, in this case Collins Concise Dictionary and the word 'doubt.' It is thus:

1. doubt. uncertainty about the truth, fact or existence (esp in in doubt,without doubt, etc.)
2. (often pl.) lack of belief in or conviction about something.
3. an unresolved difficulty, point, etc,
4. Obs. fear.
5. give (someone) the benefit of the doubt. to presume (someone suspected of guilt) innocent.
6. no doubt, almost certainly.

In the case under discussion it would be correct, and yes, essential, that no one should try to change the meaning.

Where there is doubt there is no resolution. Where there is doubt there cannot be an answer (or did I just say that?) Where there is doubt only point 5 applies.

It follows that since no one knows what happened there must be doubt. Assumptions are invalid and it is willfully wrong to assume otherwise.

The regulations at the time state categorically that no doubt whatsoever must exist before passing a verdict of gross negligence on the pilots. Both Air Marshals were therefore wrong in making the pilots negligent. The House of Lords stated that.

Try as anyone might say otherwise. The FACT remains that doubt existed then as it does today and the pilots were NOT therefore negligent.

Hi Courtney,
Why are the rules absurd?

By the use of the word 'there' I'll assume that you mean the point of impact. Hope you don't mind me doing that, but assumptions appear to be acceptable in this particular incident.

OK, here's my best shot...
3.20pm - Chinook ZD576 returns from the morning taskings to RAF Aldergrove. The reported problem with the RNS252 navigation equipment cannot be replicated on the ground.

3.40pm - Turnaround service carried out on ZD576.

5.30pm - Yachstman sailing off the coast of the Mull states he can clearly see the lighthouse and white perimiter wall. Visibility estimated to be "certainly in excess of three miles and possibly five miles".

5.42.pm - Chinook ZD576 departs RAF Aldergrove.

5.46pm - Radio transmission from ZD576 confirms departure and states on route to Inverness.

5.55pm - ZD576 attempts to contact Scottish Military Air Traffic Control, "Scottish Military, Good Afternoon this is F4J40." The call went unanswered.

5.55pm - Just after the shipping forecast on the radio, the yachtsman reported observing ZD576 flying well below cloud in a straight line and at level altitude. He further stated that he observed sunlight glinting off the fuselage of the aircraft. On the weather at the time, he commented that "There was certainly low cloud sticking to the coast, but it was not sufficient to cover the lighthouse."

5.56pm (approx) - Waypoint change was made on the SuperTANS, moving from waypoint A (Lighthouse) to waypoint B (Corran). Usual procedure was for both pilots to indicate, and agree, that they had seen the waypoint prior to any changes being made. Why then, following decisive action by the pilots, do they not follow on with that course of action? Why do they not turn the aircraft to follow the new waypoint after going through the motions of inputting it? I don't know, do you?

5.58:55pm - The SuperTANS performed a computation which calculated the alttude, but not aircraft position. Altitude was given as 665ft + 50ft.

5.59:10pm - The SuperTANS navigation equipment powered down. Presumably at the time of the accident.

So, they ended up crashing into the Mull because they ignored a decisive action that they, themselves took. Or was it because the spring came loose, or detached in flight, prior to impact (as the AAIB could not rule out). Oh, hang on. Was it because of a problem with the aircraft (which was well known throughout the fleet at the time), or maybe the navigation fault from the earlier sortie recurred. Perhaps two highly trained Special Forces pilots simply ignored all their training, forgot the environment that both of them knew extremely well, ignored the protestations of their crewmen and simply decided to see if a Chinook could go through solid landmass.

Thinking about it, I can't be entirely sure, with absolutely no doubt whatsoever, so it would be unwise to pick one option and state categorically 'that is why they ended up where they did'. Bigger brains than me have tried, and they can't agree either. Sorry.

For the record, I am here by the good grace of all at PPRuNe Towers. it is their train set, not mine.

Feel free to ask awkward questions. I do frequently of the MoD. They find it difficult to answer on occasion too.

Wrathmonk - Thank you for your kind words.
Chugalug 2 - Thank you also for the recognition of my natural talent. I knew it would come in handy one day!

Kind regards,
Brian

"Justice has no expiry date" - John Cook

PPrune Pop

Or for the definition of 'fruitcake' thus:

1. fruitcake (adj) Walter Kennedy, a most amusing anecdote teller and occasional visitor to earth.
:p