In the swirling evening fog of June 2, 1994, RAF Chinook helicopter ZD576 crashed into a remote mountainside on the Mull of Kintyre, killing all 29 people on board.
In the swirling evening fog of June 2, 1994, RAF Chinook helicopter ZD576 crashed into a remote mountainside on the Mull of Kintyre, killing all 29 people on board and resulting in one of the Air Force's worst peacetime disasters.
Its highly trained four-man RAF crew belong to the elite Special Forces – the two pilots, Flight Lieutenants Jonathan Tapper, 30, and Rick Cook, 28, have thousands of hours of flying experience on Chinooks, while loadmasters Kev Hardie and Graham Forbes are skilled navigators. Hardie saw action in the Gulf War and helped drop the now famous Bravo Two Zero SAS patrol hundreds of miles behind enemy lines.
The event is held annually outside Northern Ireland to review the year's tragedies and assess the prospects of a peace settlement in Ulster.Flt Lt Tapper plans a low-level route skirting the lighthouse on the southwest edge of the Mull of Kintyre, 42 nautical miles away, then north, hugging the coastline up the Sound of Jura before cutting through the Great Glen.
Swathes of fog have been building and dissipating in the Irish Sea, while the Kintyre peninsula is swallowed up in low mist and light rain.5.42pm - The Chinook takes off from RAF Aldergrove with Cook as the operating pilot in the right-hand cockpit seat and Tapper, as non-handling pilot, to his left.Within 20 minutes, all 29 people on board will be dead.
She often hears military helicopters near her house and has a 'gut feeling' there is 'something strange about the noise' coming from the rotors. Through a break in the cloud, he can see the helicopter from about a quarter to half a mile away, its landing gear, markings and flashing light all visible. He cannot see that Flt Lt Cook is frantically pulling the 'up' lever to squeeze every last ounce of lift from the stricken aircraft.
It flips over and flies upside down, the blades gouging into the hillside, before skidding and breaking in two. Locals from the nearby village of Southend and workers from Carskiey Estate where the aircraft came down race over to help, while the first professionals on scene are a paramedic and a local doctor.
6.30pm - The first police teams and local coastguard volunteers are on the ground just as David Soudan, manager of Carskiey Estate for 30 years, arrives with his son. 7.45pm - Rescue has turned to recovery and medical teams start to leave the scene knowing there is nothing for them to do. Senior officers deny rumours that MI5 and special branch officers have also arrived to search for sensitive documents scattered over the square mile of the crash site.
The RUC team led by Mr Fitzsimons, 52, included Det Ch Sup Dessie Conroy, 55; Det Ch Sup Maurice Neilly, 45; Det Sup Phil Davidson, 45; Det Sup Bob Foster, 41; Det Sup Billy Gwilliam, 50; Det Sup Ian Phoenix, 51; Det Ch Insp Denis Bunting, 39; Det Insp Stephen Davidson, 39; and Det Insp Kevin Magee, 44.
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