New Old Evidence in Mull of Kintyre Crash 'Isn't New Evidence At All Because It's Old Evidence, See?' Claims MoD

The Ministry of Defence has discounted new evidence - which the BBC claims to have discovered - concerning the crash of an RAF Chinook helicopter full of intelligence staff in 1994, which points the finger of blame at defective engine management software.

One internal document, written by experts at the MoD's aircraft testing centre at Boscombe Down nine months before the doomed machine crashed on Mull of Kintyre, killing all on board, states unequivocally that the Fadec software was "positively dangerous". Another, written on the day of the crash, said it was "imperative" that the RAF "should cease operations" with the Chinook HC Mk.2.

Following the disaster, both an RAF Board of Inquiry and a Fatal Accident Inquiry were unable to establish the exact cause of the crash. However, a couple of RAF Air Marshals subsequently decided that the media were still asking inconvenient questions and that the two pilots - Flt Lts John Tapper and Richard Cook - were conveniently dead, and therefore unable to deny that they were probably playing a drunken game of Strip the Willow or something in the cockpit, when they should have been looking out for small but extremely solid islands.

However, the MoD is so far refusing to reconsider the verdict, claiming that the new evidence does not warrant re-examination of the case.

"This evidence is nothing new, as the relatives of the scapegoats - sorry, useless aircrew - have been claiming for donkey's years that the Fadec engine management software was to blame," said a RAF spokesman. "For that matter, most of this so-called 'new' evidence was published in Computer Weekly last June. And old evidence isn't new evidence - it's old evidence, which obviously isn't any kind of evidence at all, do you understand?"

"Look, I knew Richard Tapper and John Cook personally, and I can tell you for a fact that they were a couple of daredevil headcases who never once climbed into a cockpit sober," added the young pilot officer. "So just drop it, OK?"

He then offered to arrange transport home for the reporters present, in a Chinook HC Mk.2 which just happened to be waiting outside.