Wife's 'anger' at helicopter crash still remains

The wife of a senior police officer killed in an RAF Chinook helicopter crash in 1994 has said she is still "angry" at the government's stance on the tragedy.

Dr Susan Phoenix's husband Ian was among leading security personnel killed when the helicopter went down in foggy conditions over the Mull of Kintyre in Scotland.

Families of the 29 people killed have said they are launching legal action against the Ministry of Defence (MoD) for not ordering a public inquiry. The government has said the crash was a "tragic accident".

Dr Phoenix, 77, who now lives in Portland, Dorset, said the case had been an "obscenity of justice".

The helicopter was carrying 25 passengers - made up of personnel from MI5, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and the Army - and four crew from RAF Aldergrove in Northern Ireland to a conference at Fort George near Inverness on 2 June 1994.

After the crash, pilots Flt Lt Jonathan Tapper, from Norfolk, and Flt Lt Richard Cook, from Hampshire, were accused of gross negligence, but this verdict was overturned by the UK government 17 years later.

A subsequent review by Lord Philip set out "numerous concerns" raised by those who worked on the Chinooks.

The MoD's testing centre at Boscombe Down in Wiltshire declared the Chinook Mk2 helicopters "unairworthy" prior to the crash.

Dr Phoenix, whose husband Ian was a detective superintendent in the RUC, has joined with other families to campaign for a "judge-led objective inquiry".

"It really is heart breaking. We stuck in there and fought for the pilots - who were the cream of the air force and trying to make do with a faulty piece of kit," she said.

"We now know the aircraft was not airworthy, but the government are constantly re-iterating that it was just a tragic accident.

"Whatever happened on that night we may never know that, but we certainly know they should not have been flying it and they did not want to fly it."

The families of the victims want a High Court judge to review information that they say was not included in previous investigations and could offer new information on the airworthiness of the helicopter.

Dr Phoenix said the tragedy had been "locked up in cover up" over the 31 years since the crash.

"I wasn't even angry at the time. I was consumed in heart-wrenching grief," she said.

"Now listening to the young families paying tribute to their fathers... so now I'm angry.

"Let's give these young people back a sense of pride - they knew their dads were doing great jobs.

"We though our men would be protected by the government - they weren't."

The MoD has said that records held in The National Archives contain personal information and early release of those documents would breach their data protection rights.

An MoD spokesperson said: "The Mull of Kintyre crash was a tragic accident and our thoughts and sympathies remain with the families, friends and colleagues of all those who died."

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