By James Jones
A secret report reveals that senior RAF officers knew of serious safety problems with the Nimrod spy plane long before one caught fire and broke up over Afghanistan in 2006, killing the 14-man crew.
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) attempted to block the release of the Nimrod Airworthiness Review Team (NART) report which was obtained under freedom of information (FoI) rules. Within days of the FoI request, officials claimed it could not be found, even though it was referred to in the 2009 Haddon-Cave report. The claim that it could not be found was then backed up by other officials on appeal.
Eventually, the NART report was found, but officials said it was too expensive to copy. They finally agreed to release it after an offer was made to pay the costs.
But the MoD then held back the distribution list. When they did release the list, it showed that the most senior RAF officer who was sent the report – which warned that numerous serious “airworthiness hazards” could lead to disaster – was Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup.
Stirrup was chief of defence staff at the time of the 2006 loss of Nimrod XV230, and when the inquiry by lawyer Charles Haddon-Cave into RAF airworthiness problems published its damning conclusions. But Stirrup and other officers responsible for the safety of RAF aircraft at the time of the secret 1998 report escaped censure in the 2009 Haddon-Cave report.
It is now clear that MPs were misled by certain aspects of the Haddon-Cave report, as presented by the secretary of state for defence on 28 November 2009. The report paints a glowing picture of airworthiness in the 1990s and claims that "Airworthiness in the MOD became a casualty of the process of cuts, change, dilution and distraction commenced by the 1998 Strategic Defence Review".
In fact, Haddon-Cave went out of his way to praise the chief engineers of the period – Air Chief Marshal Sir Michael Alcock and Air Marshal Sir Colin Terry – referring to “high calibre, leadership and the long screw-driver approach", and calling their tenure the "golden period" in airworthiness. He then reprimanded two senior officers, General Sir Sam Cowan and Air Chief Marshal Sir Malcolm Pledger, for allowing the situation to deteriorate on their watch from 2000 to 2006.
This state of affairs was far from the truth. Having read, in full, two reports drawn up by the Chinook and Nimrod Airworthiness Review (CHART and NART) teams in 1992 and 1998 respectively, it is clear that the period of decline started in the 1990s, during Alcock and Terry’s watch.
For example, the Nimrod report talks of inadequate supervision of aircrew and ground crews, an imbalance between tasking and available resources, depletion on manpower and equipment, ineffective simulator training, poor servicing manuals, outdated zonal inspection procedures, unknown safety margins for wing structure due to corrosion, poor control of tools and loose articles on aircraft, totally inadequate manning levels for key airworthiness positions at staff level, cost before safety with board of inquiry recommendations, dangerous operating conditions for the back-end crew of the Nimrod R Mk1 and problems with approach aid equipments on the MR Mk2 fleet which constituted a major threat to flight safety.
Many of the issues were repeats of those raised by CHART, clearly indicating (a) the systemic nature of the failings and (b) that little or nothing was done. In total, the NART report lists some 120 airworthiness recommendations, of which 47 were regarded as "Airworthiness Concerns" and 11 as "Airworthiness Hazards".
One of those “Airworthiness Hazards” referred to recommendations made by boards of inquiry into previous accidents were not being carried out due to budget cuts. “Some recommendations with significant financial implications were not taken forward on those grounds alone, rather than after due consideration of the ongoing operational risks,” the report said.
One of the board of inquiry recommendations not implemented because of cost was the replacement of alloy hydraulic couplings with a stainless steel version. This recommendation was made after a fire on board a Nimrod R1 aircraft in 1995 melted the alloy hydraulic couplings leading to loss of control. The crew of Nimrod XV230 lost control of their aircraft 12 miles from Kandahar after the fire on board melted the alloy hydraulic couplings. The aircraft then broke up after an explosion on board.
The unavoidable question is this: had action been taken in 1992, would the Chinook have crashed on the Mull of Kintyre, the Nimrod in Afghanistan or, indeed, any of the other accidents occurred that were attributed to airworthiness failings?
In view of this enlightening information, it is considered that Cowan and Pledger could do little to reverse the decline in the airworthiness regime and culture that had been in existence for over a decade – and as such should be cleared of all "charges" that they were responsible for the decline. A question that needs to be answered is: what actions did the RAF chief engineers and assistant chiefs of air staff take once the CHART and NART reports were submitted to them?
In addition, the structural integrity/corrosion problems outlined in the NART report call into question the decision taken in 1996 to go ahead and use the Mk2 fuselage for the Nimrod MRA Mk4. How was it possible to know the state of the fuselage if "Both past and present procedures for the recording of all corrosion related repairs have been/are inadequate, to the extent that no comprehensive record for each aircraft is available to either the Design Authority (DA) or aircraft Support Authority (SA)"?
In 2006, “lap joints” on the fuselage were found to be cracking and a fleet-wide inspection of all lap joints on the fuselage skin was called for under a Special Technical Instruction. What is more concerning is that following the comments made by NART, relating to the possible erosion of reserve strength factors due to wings and fuselage corrosion, the Nimrod force continued flying because “it would seem that, regrettably, the aircraft SA did not think it necessary at the time to pursue the reasons behind, and implications of, the incomplete recording of corrosion repairs in service”. In short, should the MR2 fleet have been grounded in 1996?
Did corrosion problems eventually catch up with the MRA Mk4 programme? Was this the real reason for the cancellation (they were quick to cut up the aircraft)? Did we waste £4bn on something that should never have been started?
Perhaps, at a fraction of the cost, viable alternatives would have been money better spent, protecting the livelihoods of many people living in the Kinloss area and, vitally, maintaining a maritime capability crucial to an island nation.
Baroness Cohen of Pimlico, who was a non-executive member of the board of the Defence Logistics Organisation and who has campaigned on behalf of Cowan and Pledger, welcomed the report’s release. “It demonstrates that the organisational and other problems behind the Nimrod tragedy were far deeper and of longer standing than revealed in Mr Haddon Cave's report,” she said. “I hope that the MoD can now concentrate on making the changes needed to avoid this sort of disaster for the future."
– James Jones worked as a Nimrod engineering officer and was responsible for carrying out flight trials prior to the aircraft entering service in 1968. Since the 2006 Nimrod XV230 crash in Afghanistan, he has acted as a technical advisor to the families who lost loved ones and has advised their legal counsel during the subsequent inquest.
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