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On
a windswept Scottish hillside on June
2, 1994, an RAF Chinook helicopter
crashed, killing all 29 people on
board. In last week's News Review Sir
William Wratten, who led the crash
inquiry, defended his finding that the
pilots were guilty of gross
negligence. As an experienced pilot
Sir William is, of course, entitled to
an opinion but what he is offering us
is theory, not fact.
He dismisses the idea of an
unidentified emergency out of hand;
sadly this shows a lack of
understanding about today's
computerised aircraft; things do go
wrong and the unexplained does happen.
A few years ago I was taking off in a
Tornado when it refused to do what the
pilot asked. Seconds away from
disaster, the aircraft responded and,
after much brow mopping, we landed the
jet and handed it over to the
engineers.
They spent days examining the flying
controls but not only could they find
no fault, they found no evidence that
anything had gone wrong in the first
place. Imagine driving down the
motorway at 70mph when your car
inexplicably applies its own brakes or
puts the steering to full left lock.
Though it might be difficult to
believe, incidents such as this are
legion in the RAF and are called
"uncommanded flying control
movements", or UFCMs.
Since 1994 there have been more than
160 UFCMs reported on helicopters
alone. I am not saying that a UFCM was
responsible for the crash, but if I
had not been so fortunate on the day
my aircraft did something it
shouldn't, I wonder who would be
defending my reputation now.
The pilot chatrooms on the internet
have been glowing red hot over the
past week as a result of last week's
article. I could almost agree with Sir
William's conclusions if that was all
I knew. But if you read all the
details of the case - rather than
selecting bits to help an argument -
you realise that a grave injustice was
perpetrated against the pilots.
When crash investigators arrived at the
smouldering wreckage on the Mull of
Kintyre all 29 people on board were
dead. There were no witnesses, no
radio calls, no radar traces and, as
they had not been fitted, no
information from either a cockpit
voice or accident data recorder
(so-called black boxes). Much can be
gleaned from wreckage, but it is not a
precise science.
Seven months later the inquiry report
was delivered. The president concluded
that "there were many potential
causes of the accident . . . but . . .
the board was unable to determine a
definite cause".
To avoid the sin of cherry picking
myself, I should say that the
president also concluded that the
"most probable" cause was
that the pilots selected an
inappropriate rate of climb over the
Mull. The crew simply failed to avoid
the hillside. This theory was subject
to "speculation" and
"it would be incorrect to
criticise [the pilot] for human
failings based on the available
evidence". The Ministry of
Defence - and Wratten - read the
report and came to a different
conclusion; that the pilots were
guilty of gross negligence. Is an
opinion, based on limited evidence,
good enough grounds to destroy the
reputations of two good men? Sir
William believes that it is. In their
absence Flight Lieutenant Jonathan
Tapper and Flight Lieutenant Richard
Cook were found guilty of gross
negligence, in effect, guilty of
manslaughter. They were allowed no
legal representation at what was
tantamount to a trial, held in secrecy
and presided over by the very people
who had most to lose in the case.
If an airline suffered a fatal crash,
would it be allowed to investigate its
own culpability, produce its own
report and exonerate the company from
any responsibility? Would it be
allowed to cast aside independent
scrutiny of its findings; calling
them, as Sir William did, "a
seriously misleading public campaign .
. . wilful ignorance"? Probably
not, but sadly that is the ethos of
the military hierarchy.
To set the record straight, the
"wilful ignorance" has been
contributed by a senior aircraft
accident investigator, a Chinook unit
test pilot and a Chinook software
engineer.
As for the "misleading public
campaign"; the families of the
dead pilots believe that, as there is
doubt surrounding the crash, the
verdict of gross negligence was
unjust. The Ministry of Defence
insists it has a "full and
accurate picture" of the final
seconds of the flight. This, quite
simply, is untrue.
Sir William insists that because a
navigation button was pressed the crew
was in full control. That is rather
like saying because a car driver used
his indicator it proved that there was
nothing wrong with the steering and
that the tyres could not subsequently
have burst.
Flying a complex military aircraft is
not like flying a desk. All that is
left of flight ZD 576 are gravestones,
wreckage and theories. The fact that a
senior officer holds a theory does not
necessarily make it right.
John Nichol, whose Tornado was shot
down during the Gulf war, served in
the RAF for 15 years
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