I was involved in the Nimrod Fleet in the Royal Air Force from 1970 until 1976 full time and then until 1994 in the reserve. The aeroplanes were getting rather old by that time having been in service nearly twenty five years and had loads of hasty mods done as a result of the Falklands war and Gulf War 1 such as refuelling probes and specialist comms equipment and various missiles. The last dramatic incident was aeroplane number XV230 in Kandahar when the crew were lost as the aeroplane exploded in mid air. The Crew was from Nimrod Squadron 120 based at R.A.F. Kinloss in Scotland and it was crew 3.
I flew as part of 120sqn crew 3 until 1994 and though the crew had been changed several times since my involvement in that crew, on Maritime Squadrons crew affinity and kinship always remains.
Today, a report that has taken nearly three years - since the accident - has been published and names quite a few senior people that are in some way to blame and the R.A.F along with the Ministry of Defence are guilty of putting cost savings before airworthiness. Waiting for this report has been a difficult period for the families but now they have some specific names to target and I really do now expect some massive law suits to follow in the footsteps of this tragedy.
I for one get some comfort from the fact that some lessons may have been learned but in this cost conscious world we live in, these wars are maybe just one cost too far.
Here is the Telegraph write up on this report:
Nimrod crash review: report criticises MoD and private companies
Four senior military officers, five defence contractors and a former civil servant have been strongly criticised over the events that led to the crash of Nimrod XV 230 in 2006.
<!-- Make sure there is no whitespoace at the end of the bline -->By James Kirkup
Published: 8:00PM GMT 28 Oct 2009
In particular, BAE bears substantial responsibility, the report says Photo: PA
The ten men are all identified as key figures in a history of the flaws that brought down Nimrod XV230 on 2 September 2006 began decades before the aircraft took off on its final flight.
The independent review by Charles Haddon-Cave QC details a long list of failures and oversights by technicians, defence companies, commanders and ministers that led to the crash, which killed 14 British service personnel.
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It details a mistakes and oversights dating back to 1969, the same year Nimrod XV230 entered service with the Royal Air Force.
The review is clear that the XV230 caught fire and crashed because fuel overflowed during a mid-air refuelling operation, and then ignited when it came into contact with the hot metal of a duct from the aircraft’s supplementary cooling pack.
The pack, which included pipes heated to more than 400 C, was a long-standing modification made to Nimrods, installed in 1979 to ensure the aircraft’s huge array of electronic equipment could be kept cool enough to function. The pack combined with an earlier modification, made in 1969, to channel hot air away from the plane’s engines.
Another botched modification came in 1989 when the Nimrods were adapted for air-to-air-refuelling. The new systems raised the risk of fuel leaking, the inquiry found.
The three changes introduced critical design flaws to the aircraft which played a “crucial part” in the loss of the XV230. Yet for years, those flaws were missed by engineers and not addressed by an “unsatisfactory” RAF maintenance regime.
In 1998, an official MoD report warned of the dangers posed by continuing to fly the Nimrods, aircraft which even then were considered to be “ageing”.
In 2002, the MoD introduced new regulations requiring a “safety case” for all military aircraft. These all-round assessments were intended to “identify, assess, and mitigate potentially catastrophic hazards before they could cause an accident.”
In the case of the Nimrod, the safety case was drawn up by BAE Systems and an “Integrated Project Team” at the MoD. QinetiQ, a defence firm, advised on the project.
The safety review represented “the best opportunity to capture the serious design flaws in the Nimrod which had lain dormant for years,” the review concluded.
However, that opportunity was spectacularly and disastrously missed.
The safety case was “a lamentable job from start to finish” and “riddled with errors,” Mr Haddon-Cave said. “It missed the key dangers. Its production is a story of incompetence, complacency, and cynicism.”
In particular, BAE bears substantial responsibility, the report says.
Its work was “riddled with errors of fact, analysis and risk categorisation”. In particular, the “catastrophic fire hazard” presented by the supplementary cooling pack duct was wrongly assessed as “tolerable”.
That assessment is especially striking because while the BAE review was underway, another Nimrod, XV227, suffered a rupture in the duct of its SCP. That incident should have been a “wake-up call” to the danger, the inquiry found. But the warning was ignored.
And when BAE handed over the safety case work to the BAE, it gave the “misleading impression” that it had fully and properly completed the work. That left the MoD with a “false sense of security” about Nimrod safety.
Three senior BAE employees are named and criticised in the review:
Chris Lowe, the chief airworthiness engineer, Richard Oldfield, the the leader of the Nimrod review for BAE Systems; and Eric Prince he company's flight systems and avionics manager
If they had done their job properly, Mr Haddon-Cave said, the risk of a fire would have been reduced and the accident “would have been avoided.”
The MoD team involved in the safety case also failed, he said. If it had done its job properly and adequately supervised the BAE work, there was a “good prospect” that the accident would have been averted.
The MoD team was led by Group Captain (now Air Commodore) George Baber. Wing Commander Michael Eagles oversaw the safety case. Both are still serving. Also criticised is Frank Walsh, an MoD official who was the safety manager for the Nimrod review. He has now left the MoD.
Martyn Mahy and Colin Blagrove of Qinetiq, are also criticised.
As well as attributing blame over the safety case, the review also strongly criticises a wider culture around safety and risk in defence that was created by politicians and senior commanders.
The catalogue of failures to address the safety risks came amid a budget cuts and a gradual shift in the culture of the British defence establishment that prized financial management over operational safety, the review found.
General Sir Sam Cowan and Air Chief Marshal Sir Malcolm Pledger, who both held the post of Chief of Defence Logistics, were both culpable for that, the review said. Both have since retired.
Perhaps most damagingly for the MoD, it also makes clear that the XV230 should not even have been in the air on the day of the accident.
Like other Nimrod MR2 aircraft, XV230 was due to be replaced by a generation of new MR4 Nimrods in 2003. Yet mismanagement and bureaucratic errors in the procurement of the new aircraft meant that deadline was missed.
The new planes have still not entered service, meaning that Nimrods like the XV230 go on flying.
The review concludes: “But for the delays in the Nimrod MRA4 replacement programme, XV230 would probably have no longer have been flying in September 2006.”
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