The Defence Secretary, John Hutton, confirmed this morning that RAF top brass are by nature infallible, refusing to accept that the Mull of Kintyre helicopter crash was caused by anything other than blatant pilot incompetence by Flight Lieutenants Jonathan Tapper and Rick Cook.
Relatives of the dead crew have long maintained that the 1994 crash - in which a Chinook HC Mk2 helicopter carrying police and military intelligence staff from Northern Ireland flew into a fog-covered hillside, killing all 29 on board - may not have been caused by the pilots being too stupid to check the radar, as the RAF Board of Inquiry insists.
They suggest instead that, with known failures of the type’s Textron-Lycoming FADEC engine management system causing engines to shut down or surge, leading to a catastrophic loss of control, the Mk2 Chinook may perhaps not have been the safest aircraft ever to take to the skies. This view, they claim, may perhaps have been on the experts’ minds at RAe Farnborough when they refused to test-fly the type.
The Defence Secretary, however, unequivocally dispelled all doubts in his statement.
“The workings of the Ministry of Defence are mysterious and wonderful to behold,” he said. “When it comes down a choice of whether to pin the blame on the top brass or a couple of convenient dead guys, the top brass are united in telling me that the only sensible course of action is the latter - all the more so since Textron-Lycoming have such a pro-active legal department.”
“History and experience shows that the powers-that-be would never show such callous disregard for the lives of serving personnel as to push defective equipment into service,” he added. “The Snatch Land Rover, the SA80 rifle, the Nimrod, the Hercules - the list of utterly safe, well-designed kit is endless.”
Reassured citizens are reported to be queuing up outside recruiting centres today, keen to join up now that they know their welfare is indeed the paramount consideration of the chiefs of staff.
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