The Chinook Crash Cover-Up / Telegraph Magazine

Who are they? Who are these faceless bureaucrats within the Ministry of Defence who have decided – seemingly without proper explanation, independent oversight or public announcement – to seal certain documents for a century?

It seems extremely unlikely that the documents in question contain secrets that would endanger Britain’s national security. What they probably hold are facts that could end three decades of trauma for the families of 29 fallen personnel, but would severely embarrass the Royal Air Force.

Those personnel included 25 senior members of the British intelligence operation in Northern Ireland during the latter years of the Troubles, plus four RAF aircrew. They died en route from Belfast to a counter-terrorism conference in Scotland when their Chinook helicopter crashed into a foggy hillside on the Mull of Kintyre on June 2 1994.

The bereaved families are not natural troublemakers or radicals. They are people who believe, or once believed, in the state their loved ones served. But they have now begun legal action against the MoD in their search for the truth and are disgusted by what they see as 31 years of lies, deceit and obfuscation from a ministry notoriously reluctant to admit its errors.

“I’m utterly shocked. I can’t see what justification they could have for sealing those documents away for a hundred years,” says Chris Cook, the younger brother of Flt Lt Richard Cook, one of the Chinook’s two pilots whom the RAF accused of “gross negligence” until it was forced to retract the claim 16 years later.

“We’re 31 years on, and the pain is still very real, especially given that we don’t know the truth and are still being lied to by the MoD,” says Andy Tobias, a product manager from Watford who was eight when his father, Lt Col John Tobias of the Army Intelligence Corps, was killed.

Andy Tobias: ‘The pain is still very real, especially given that we don’t know the truth and are still being lied to by the MoD’ Credit: Heathcliff O'Malley

Even now, Tobias grows tearful as he talks about the father he adored and recalls their last hug. He still wears his father’s dog tag around his neck and has tattoos in his honour – an army boot, a Chinook and the doomed flight’s call sign.

“The MoD has completely lost its moral compass. It has shown no honesty, no integrity, and it’s those values that all those men and women joined the MoD for,” he says.

“I think we’ve been deceived and lied to,” says Lucy Sparks, a human resources executive from Plumstead, in south-east London, who was two when her father, Major Gary Sparks of the Royal Artillery, was killed.

“I can only think the documents are being locked up for the protection of some senior bods and that some sort of cover-up is going on.”

Tim Reid, who covered the story as a BBC journalist, is now spokesman for the Chinook Justice Campaign, which represents almost all the bereaved families, including 47 children of the dead. “There appears to be something rotten at the heart of the MoD,” he declares.

“It seems unwilling to be truthful and transparent. Instead it lies and obfuscates to cover things up.”

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Chinook ZD576 took off from RAF Aldergrove near Belfast at 5.42pm on that fateful day. The pilots were Flt Lts Jonathan Tapper and Richard Cook, both members of the elite special forces with exemplary records. Their passengers included members of the Army, MI5 and the Royal Ulster Constabulary’s Special Branch, plus one civil servant.

The helicopter crashed into the hillside while flying through fog 20 minutes later, killing everyone on board. Debris was scattered over a wide expanse of charred ground, suggesting the aircraft had struck the hillside at speed. There was no black box or flight data recorder on board.

A year later, an RAF board of inquiry found no evidence of human error and was unable to determine the cause of the accident. However, its report included an overview by two RAF Air Marshals, William Wratten and John Day, who accused the pilots of “gross negligence” despite RAF regulations requiring “absolutely no doubt whatsoever” before such a verdict could be reached.

Those two damning words inevitably captured the headlines.

The pilots’ families were appalled that their sons were effectively being accused of manslaughter. They refused to accept the charge. Cook’s father, John, a former RAF fighter pilot who later commanded the Concorde fleet, recalled that his son had expressed concerns about the Chinook’s safety and had increased his life insurance just before the crash.

The families thus began a 16-year battle to clear their sons’ names, a battle aided by assorted parliamentary inquiries and an array of investigative journalists, aeronautical experts and past or present members of the RAF and MoD who were dismayed by the apparent scapegoating of the pilots.

In 1996, a fatal accident inquiry was held in Paisley. At least one RAF aeronautical expert later claimed that the MoD ordered him not to testify. Other information was allegedly withheld.

Sir Malcolm Rifkind, defence secretary at the time of the crash, later told the BBC, “The concern is that the MoD and RAF were themselves deciding what information was relevant to the inquiry, whereas some of us might suggest that was for the inquiry to decide.”

The Chinook crashed into the hillside while flying through fog near the Mull of Kintyre in 1994, killing all aboard Credit: Chris Bacon

Sir Stephen Young, who chaired the inquiry, nonetheless concluded that “it has not been established to my satisfaction” that the pilots were to blame.

Over time, it emerged, through leaks and investigations, but never through voluntary submissions from the MoD or RAF, that this and other RAF Chinooks had a history of mechanical problems.

ZD576 entered service as a Mark 1 in 1983. In 1994, it was upgraded to a Mark 2 with a new computerised fuel control system known as full authority digital engine control (FADEC). Twice in the week after its delivery, one of its two engines had to be replaced due to faults in FADEC.

Further incidents with this and other Mark 2s over the following years triggered a series of internal memos from Boscombe Down, the MoD’s aircraft testing establishment in Wiltshire.

One warned of the “unquantifiable risk associated with the unverified nature of the FADEC”.

Another called FADEC “positively dangerous” and said its software “falls significantly short of the standard required and expected for a safety critical system”.

A third suggested that “it should not be relied on in any form whatsoever”.

Chinook ZD576, the aircraft involved in the 1994 crash, pictured here in 1987 Credit: Wiltshirespotter

It also transpired that the RAF was engaged in legal action against Boeing, the Chinook’s American manufacturer, over FADEC’s failures. Rifkind was appalled that his officials had not told him this. “How on earth was I not told […] how come the secretary of state was not informed about that?” he told the BBC last year.

The most damning memo was written on the very day of the crash by the commanding officer of Boscombe Down’s Rotary Wing Test Squadron (RWTS). It referred to several serious incidents involving FADEC, including two engine “flameouts,” and concluded: “RWTS deem it imperative, in the strongest possible terms, the RAF should be provided with a recommendation to cease Chinook HC2 operations.”

Earlier this week Robert Burke, a retired squadron leader who was an RAF helicopter test pilot at the time of the crash, claimed the doomed flight was a “show flight” intended to demonstrate that the Chinook Mark 2 was safe.

“The RAF were desperately keen to demonstrate to the army that the Chinook Mark 2 conversion programme was ok, and the best possible way of demonstrating this was to fly this very important collection of service passengers,” he told told BBC Radio Ulster. “Everybody thought it was an incredibly stupid idea.”

Narrowly focused inquiries by three parliamentary committees deemed the “gross negligence” charge against the pilots unwarranted.

On the 10th anniversary of the crash, John Major, the former prime minister, joined calls to overturn that “cruel” and unjustified verdict, saying it was time to “remove the burden that has lain too long upon their reputations and their families’ peace of mind”.

The MoD stood its ground, repeatedly insisting that “no new evidence had come to light” to warrant reopening or overturning the verdict. “They clearly tried to shut our campaign down,” says Chris Cook.

“They blocked us every way.”

But political pressure grew until, in 2010, a new inquiry was finally ordered by the Conservative–Liberal coalition government, fulfilling a Tory election manifesto pledge.

Led by Lord Philip, a former judge, it labelled the MoD’s intransigence “extremely regrettable” and demanded that the “gross negligence” verdict be set aside.

Seventeen years after the crash, Liam Fox, the defence secretary at the time, finally apologised to the pilots’ families in the House of Commons, but by then Cook’s father had been dead for six years.

Chris Cook, himself a commercial pilot based in Farnham, Surrey, says his father’s battle to clear his older son’s name had consumed his life and hastened his decline. Practically his last words were: “Keep fighting.”

The Philip review did not determine the cause of the crash, but it did record its “informal discussions” with several past and present RAF airmen.

They said the introduction of the Chinook Mark 2 had been “rushed, fraught and chaotic”, and that the helicopter had suffered “unpredictable malfunctions” including engine shutdowns and power surges.

Tapper, ZD576’s co-pilot, had told a superior officer that he felt “unprepared to fly the aircraft.”

By then, however, the pilots’ families had won their battle to clear their names. The disaster was fading from public memory, and the whole sorry saga would probably have ended there had the BBC not broadcast a documentary on the crash’s 30th anniversary last year.

Entitled Chinook: Zulu Delta 576, it revealed that the MoD had secretly ordered various documents relating to the crash to be sealed not for 10 or 20 years, but for a century.

“That came as a real shock. None of us were aware of that. And the first question was why? What else has ever been locked away for a hundred years?” says Cook.

He suspects the documents might show that the RAF knew the Chinook was dangerous, and who decided it should fly regardless.

By the time the papers are released “I will be long dead and gone and my daughter will be in her 70s,” says Lucy Sparks.

“You just can’t think of a justification unless there’s something they don’t want us to find out or someone is being protected.”

“It’s laughable,” says Andy Tobias, who suspects the documents would show who decided to put 29 people on a helicopter deemed un-airworthy.

“They’re literally trying to flush us out so nobody is able to challenge the documents when they’re finally released. It’s just disgusting.”

Normal practice is for government departments to send important documents to the National Archives at Kew after 20 years, with, if necessary, a request that they be redacted or kept closed. The independent Advisory Council on National Records and Archives then approves or rejects that request.

But there are exemptions.

Departments can seal documents containing information that would breach an individual’s data protection rights, with approval only from a National Archives director. Such files are usually closed for 100 years – that being an individual’s notional “lifetime”.

The MoD appears to have invoked that exemption in this case, saying the closed files “contain personal information relating to third party individuals”.

The bereaved families dismiss that claim as “laughable” and “ridiculous”. They argue that the MoD could redact any sensitive information about individuals, or let a senior judge review and redact the documents. They say the individuals concerned could only be MoD or RAF officials, as their own loved ones were all killed, and do not see why those officials’ right to privacy should trump their own right to the truth.

The Telegraph sent the MoD a list of specific questions. It asked who took the decision to seal the documents, whether the defence secretary had approved, why the documents had been sealed for so long, why they could not simply be redacted and, lastly, whether they had been sealed to protect senior MoD or RAF officers who let the Chinook fly knowing it was not airworthy.

It took nearly a week of persistent enquiries to extract a response from the MoD: “Unfortunately, on this occasion we are unable to provide further information on this.”

The coffins of Chinook crash victims arrive at RAF Aldergrove, brought by an RAF Hercules, ready for relatives to pay their respects Credit: PA Images / Alamy Stock Photo

The MoD has a long history of cover-ups, obfuscation and failing to admit fault unless or until compelled to do so. As revealed in July, it obtained an unprecedented superinjunction in 2023 to prevent the media reporting on the data leak that jeopardised the lives of 24,000 Afghans who had helped the British during the war.

It took 38 years and a £190m public inquiry to prove that trigger-happy British paratroopers had recklessly opened fire on unarmed civilians during a civil rights march in Londonderry, killing or wounding 28 of them on Bloody Sunday.

Veterans suffering health problems caused, they believe, by radiation from Britain’s nuclear tests in Australia and the South Pacific in the 1950s have been fighting for decades for justice, compensation and access to relevant MoD records.

Jason McCue, their lawyer, says the MoD has “consistently displayed behaviours of obstruction, obfuscation and calculated secrecy in relation to what went on many decades ago. Our nuclear veterans deserve closure, and for their long struggle for truth and justice to come to an end.”

He adds: “The inherent problem with unchecked government secrecy is that it attracts lies to maintain it, those lies become infectious, and before you know it our institutions become corrupted.”

The list goes on. Dozens of former military aircrew are suing the MoD, claiming their cancers were caused by the toxic fumes of the Sea King and other military helicopters in the 1990s and early 2000s, and that it failed to protect them despite knowing of the risk.

In 2010, the MoD paid compensation to families of 14 servicemen killed when an RAF Nimrod crashed in Afghanistan four years earlier, but only after a coroner and an independent review ruled that the plane had not been airworthy and the families had launched legal action.

Mark Stephens, a top London solicitor representing the Chinook families pro bono, says the Government’s default position on security matters is “don’t say anything, don’t let them have anything”.

The MoD is “much much worse” than other departments. “They have this sort of pomposity of elevation, so people at the top invariably have the view that they should not be criticised or subject to scrutiny in a way that any other walk of life would be expected to be, and that’s just not acceptable.”

But in this instance, far from silencing the families, the MoD’s secrecy has had precisely the opposite effect.

Following the BBC documentary, they swiftly launched a fresh campaign to discover not what happened on that June day 31 years ago, but why it happened.

How was it that a helicopter known to be unsafe was allowed – indeed ordered – to fly that day, let alone with the bulk of Northern Ireland’s intelligence establishment on board?

On June 2 last year, the 30th anniversary of the crash, the Chinook Justice Campaign called for a fresh public inquiry led by a judge who could review sealed documents.

It cited Article II of the European Convention on Human Rights, which obliges states to protect those within their jurisdiction from avoidable deaths and to investigate any such deaths. Four months later, the MoD said no.

On June 2 this year, the campaign’s solicitors sent the Government a “pre-action protocol” letter, threatening legal action if it did not agree to an inquiry. The MoD again refused, arguing that there had already been six investigations and it was “unlikely that a public inquiry would identify any new evidence or reach new conclusions on the basis of existing evidence”.

The campaign called that “utter nonsense”, saying previous investigations had examined the case against the pilots, not the circumstances surrounding the crash, and that plenty of new evidence had emerged to suggest the Chinook was not airworthy.

On July 4, it wrote to Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister and former human rights lawyer, asking him to overrule the MoD.

“For over three decades we have endured grief, unanswered questions, institutional silence and denial from the MoD,” the campaign protested. No 10 has yet to reply.

The campaign is now applying for a judicial review of the MoD’s refusal to set up a new inquiry. This process will keep the families in what Lucy Sparks calls “limbo” for yet more months or years.

She points out that at 33 she is now the age her father was when he died, and that her two-year-old daughter is the age she was that day. She says the MoD has sent her family cards marking the anniversary that arrived several days late, as well as an invitation to a memorial service that came after it had already taken place.

She calls the MoD’s conduct “an embarrassment” and declares: “The way we’ve been treated has been insulting.”

Andy Tobias says the MoD has lost all sense of morality, honesty and integrity.

“What hurts so, so much is that my Dad cherished the organisation he worked for and loved fighting for his country and prided himself on good values, but those values are not being lived and breathed by those above.”

Trevor Birney, who directed the BBC documentary, calls the Government’s penchant for secrecy “pathological”.

He adds that in this case the bereaved families are “wonderful people who have every right to ask the questions they’re asking, and I think it’s horrific the way the MoD has treated them with contempt from day one”.

Asked for his message to the MoD, Cook replied: “Treat the families with the respect they’re due. They deserve answers and should not be ignored.”