Chinook crash inquiry into Mull of Kintyre disaster
Alex Thomson
Chief Correspondent
Sixteen years from the Chinook crash on the cold, wet summer night on the mist-shrouded Mull of Kintyre, Alex Thomson asks if the end is in sight.
Word is that the eminent retired Scottish Law Lord, golfer and bagpipe enthusiast Lord Philip, will conduct an inquiry into the verdict that the two pilots, Flight Lieutenants Jon Tapper and Rick Cook, were to blame for this crash “beyond any doubt whatsoever”.
If so, it is what the families of the dead pilots have long campaigned for: a swift, private assessment of the evidence.
No witnesses. Nothing cumbersome and all done in four months, by Christmas. And a Scottish Law Lord to boot.
For, from a Scottish Sheriff Court inquiry on through the Scottish and English legal systems to the House of Lords….all have found that blaming the pilots was illogical and wrong in law.
Alone in 16 years of inquiry, inquest and Channel 4 News investigations – only the verdict passed by two RAF Chief Marshalls, saw fit to name their own pilots as the cause of the crash, beyond any doubt.
Even the RAF could not find that verdict today because it has changed the rules governing legal verdicts.
It boils to this: since nobody knows nor will ever know what caused the RAF’s worst peacetime loss of life with 29 killed, how can anyone in logic or law simply blame the pilots “beyond any doubt whatsoever.”
Because doubt lies thick as the infamous Mull mist.
The Mull of Kintyre Chinook Crash
The Chinook crashed on 2 June 1994. Four crew and 25 senior intelligence officers from Northern Ireland were killed in the crash.
(Watch how Alex Thomson reported the crash, above).
Pilots Jonathan Tapper, 30, and Richard Cook, 28, were initially cleared of blame by an RAF board of inquiry.
The board ruled it was impossible to establish the cause of the crash and a fatal accident inquiry agreed.
But an official RAF inquiry into the incident concluded the aircraft was airworthy and found the pilots guilty.
These Chinooks had such severe technical problems the RAF test pilots refused to fly them.
Moreover Channel 4 News has their memo begging the rest of the RAF to do likewise. It was sent the very day before the disaster.
One of the pilots was so worried he looked into the state of his life insurance just before the flight.
The pilots pleaded to be able to fly one of the older, reliable Chinooks also available. That request was declined.
The unreliability of these Chinooks’ engine control system has been the subject of a series of lawsuits, to say nothing if uncontrolled engine incidents and even crashes.
Yet, denying all evidence, logic and even the change in its own legal rules, the MOD and RAF top brass have simply stuck to the script: “no doubt whatsoever”.
It’s understood the piping and putting Lord Philip will now have the opportunity, campaigners argue, to right that wrong and clear the names of Jon Tapper and Rick Cook, after all this time.