Evidence 'will clear' Kintyre crash pilots

POWERFUL new evidence that could finally clear the names of two RAF pilots killed in the Mull of Kintyre helicopter crash will be presented to Defence Secretary Des Browne this week.

Campaigners have used Freedom of Information laws to gather new evidence, as well as re-evaluating existing information about the 1994 Chinook disaster in which 29 air crew and intelligence experts died.

Lord Martin O'Neill, of the Mull of Kintyre parliamentary group, and top QC Michael Powers will hand over the document at a meeting of the Ministry of Defence on Tuesday evening.

Michael Tapper, the father of one of the pilots, Jonathan Tapper, said he was "cautiously optimistic" the dossier would result in the quashing of the RAF verdict against his son and co-pilot Flt Lt Richard Cook that they had been guilty of "gross negligence".

Tapper said: "I hope that he (Browne] will say that the verdict cannot stand, removing a gross injustice against two dead pilots. They are innocent."

He added: "There's no silver bullet. It's not so much about new evidence as presenting a really sound legal document which should be considered (in full]."

O'Neill said: "The pilots' families have been materially looked after, it's not a question of money. It's a question of the relatives and children who still have to live with the sense that their loved ones were responsible for the deaths of 27 people and that's grossly unfair."

The case rests on proving that the RAF board of inquiry did not reach the required standard of "absolutely no doubt whatsoever" on the pilots' alleged negligence.

Evidence includes a report by an Air Accidents Investigation Branch inspector who was unable to dismiss the possibility of "an undemanded flight control movement, an engine run-up or a control jam having occurred" – events which could have had a serious effect on the pilots' ability to control the aircraft.

Other evidence throws doubt on the results of a mathematical simulation by manufacturers Boeing on the helicopter's final seconds.

The RAF board of inquiry placed great weight on the Boeing results, but the campaign group's dossier contains documents showing that although the helicopter's navigation equipment produced an approximate height for the aircraft at an approximate number of seconds before impact, it did not contain details of its position or speed.

Browne has the power either to set aside the ruling by the RAF's board of inquiry or to order a fresh inquiry.

His predecessors, including John Reid, Geoff Hoon and Lord George Robertson, failed to overturn the RAF verdict, although Malcolm Rifkind, the Defence Secretary at the time of the crash, and John Major, who was Prime Minister at the time, now support the families' case.

O'Neill said: "Des Browne is a man with legal training, an ex-advocate, who will weigh up the evidence and come to his own conclusions. I believe that he will not be able to find the weight of proof required to secure a finding of gross negligence.

"We have produced a substantial document that contains a twin-track approach of powerful legal arguments and technical evidence. I believe natural justice will prevail and the names of these two young men will be cleared."

Tapper, 30, from Burnham Thorpe in Norfolk, and Cook, 28, from Church Crookham, Hampshire, died when their helicopter ZD 576 crashed in thick fog on the way from RAF Aldergrove in Northern Ireland to Fort George, near Inverness, in June 1994.

All 29 people on board, including 25 senior Northern Ireland intelligence officers, were killed.

The RAF's own internal inquiry originally ruled that it was impossible to establish the exact cause but said there were no "human failings".

That conclusion was overturned by two senior RAF officers, Air Vice Marshal John Day and Air Chief Marshal Sir William Wratten, who said the pilots were flying too fast and too low in thick fog and reached a verdict of gross negligence.

The families' campaign has been supported by three major independent inquiries – a Scottish fatal accident inquiry in 1996, a Public Accounts Committee Inquiry in 2000, and a Lords Select Committee Inquiry in 2001/02. The PAC said problems with the helicopter's Fadec software control system could have been a cause of the crash.

The UK Government has rejected the findings of all these inquiries.