hercs inquest
anybody know any good RAF experts who know about Hercs?
Best wishes Ian Shoesmith BBC News AVIATOR 'SILENCED OVER HERCULES SAFETY CONCERNS' By Simon Evans, PA An RAF aviator was silenced for speaking out about safety fears on Hercules planes three years before 10 men died when one crashed in Iraq, he told an inquest today. Squadron Leader Christopher Seal, a former flight commander with 47 Squadron, said he wrote a "lessons identified" memo - referred to despairingly as "lessons ignored" - after returning from serving in Afghanistan in 2002. Among his concerns was that ESF (explosion-suppressant foam) should be fitted to the Hercules wing--located fuel tanks. On January 30, 2005, an RAF Hercules was hit in a tank by small arms fire near Baghdad. The tank exploded, blowing off a wing, killing the 10 men on board. It was only after this that ESF began to be fitted on RAF Hercules aircraft. Mr Seal was presented today with documents from the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA) dating back to 1993 about UK research into ESF, which US Hercules planes have had since the Vietnam War. One DERA document, from 1994, said the UK was "lagging behind the US" on the issue. Mr Seal said he never knew about this research. "I'm gob-smacked, astonished," he told the inquest into the death of the ten men in Trowbridge, Wilts, on seeing the document. He said he only found out about ESF after a US pilot told him his aircraft had it. Mr Seal sent his 'lessons identified' document on November 12, 2002, with a letter described today as "sadly prophetic". In it he wrote: "I appreciate that a number of points are politically sensitive or already being worked but it does no harm to have lessons identified written down that may be of use for higher-level staff work or, ultimately, a ready-made history lesson for those who follow in our footsteps." Mr Seal said, however, that by the time he sent this, he had already "got into trouble" for voicing his concerns about other Hercules safety issues, among them infra-red counter measures and night flying tactics. While in Afghanistan earlier in 2002, he emailed safety concerns to his superiors in theatre and in Britain. Although well-received in theatre, he said he felt those higher up the chain of command were ignoring the matters. On his return to the UK he emailed all his superiors right up to the head of Strike Command - a measure he described as "a cry for help in the dark". He was subsequently reprimanded for going above his station and "censored" thereafter, he said. He expressed frustration today at the "convoluted" nature of obtaining crucial safety modifications, which involved long-winded chains of command. "There is a difference between lessons identified and lessons learned - these were known throughout my tenure as lessons ignored," he told the court. Mr Seal said that because RAF Hercules had for so many years been so reliable, many having been shot in the fuel tanks without exploding, RAF crews had developed a "false sense of security." He said he believed the time the aircraft would need to be out of action and money were the main factors why ESF was not fitted to Hercules. He later found out that the cost of fitting ESF was just #600,000 per aircraft and that each would be sidelined for just four or five weeks. Bernard Collaery, for Kellie Merritt, the widow of Flt Lt Paul Pardoel, said his client wished to "commend" Mr Seal and "hoped others would be as assertive about the needs of their men." Mr Seal replied: "All I can say is it does not do your career any good." The victims based at RAF Lyneham in Wiltshire were: RAF 47 Squadron's Flt Lt David Stead, the pilot, 35; Flt Lt Andrew Smith, 25, the co-pilot; Master Engineer Gary Nicholson, 42; Flt Sgt Mark Gibson, 34, Australian airman Paul Pardoel, 35, a navigator; and from Lyneham's Engineering Wing, Chief Technician Richard Brown, 40, an avionics specialist; Sergeant Robert O'Connor, 38, an engineering technician; and Corporal David Williams, 37, a survival equipment fitter, a passenger. Acting L/Cpl Steven Jones, 25, of Fareham, Hampshire, a Royal Signals soldier, was also part of the crew. Sqn Ldr Patrick Marshall, 39, from Strike Command Headquarters, RAF High Wycombe, was another passenger on the Hercules. mfl 231342 APR 08 |
Why isn't this information (vulnerability) classified?
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Have a look at the Hercules Inquest thread on the Mil forum. There is a plethora of sensible and IMO justifiably aggrieved comment on there.
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anybody know any good RAF experts who know about Hercs? |
Serving officers won't talk - but maybe an ex-RAF Hercules pilot, no longer bound by a reserve commission might?
Good luck if you post in the mil forum, Ian, they tend not to like journalists there (more so than the rest of Pprune)... Spacey |
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Ian, I generally applaud the way you work, but please be extremely careful not to unwittingly worsen the risk for our service men and women or give others the opportunity to do so on this one. I was quite surprised at some of the overtness in the threads Scroggs linked to - maybe there's already some pseudo military involvement in those threads?
I know nothing about these things but I assume operationally we need the Herc so much that we can't easily do without it, so until that changes, surely almost everything still secret about it should remain secret? |
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