British Army helicopter support was "on the ropes" - 15-11-97

British helicopter crisis
Kintyre crash should focus on overall safety record

British Army were "on the ropes" with RAF and Army Air Corps unable to sustain air operations as British desperately sought junk helicopters worldwide.

 The current, November 1997, issue of "Saoirse" (journal of Republican Sinn Féin) has seized on revelations by the Celtic League about the critical state of British Army helicopter support facilities in N. Ireland in the early 1990s. The League first revealed the extent of the British Army problems in 1993. We published detail in our magazine CARN of (British) Ministry of Defence attempts to procure second-hand junk helicopters in the third world and Australia.

 The story recently resurfaced in the influential English Guardian newspaper when it was revealed, in a bizarre new twist, that the British tried to purchase, from India, helicopters originally supplied by their own Overseas Aid Department.

 The scandal was hushed up by the British Labour government but now "Saoirse" has highlighted the issue as an illustration of how close the IRA were to breaking the British Army's ability to sustain its garrisons in areas of South Armagh and the west of Ulster.

 In 1994 the Celtic League published a centre spread in the mainstream republican newspaper "An Phoblacht". With the same article in Republican Sinn Féin's journal, "Saoirse", we set out in detail the difficulties the British garrison were having in the border areas where travel by road by the military was impossible. We indicated that the helicopter logistical tight-rope which supplied the border garrisons was about to be severed - paradoxically the original cease fire was declared at this time.

 Now some in the republican movement are querying if, with the British "on the ropes", the cease fire should have been declared - only time will tell!

 Bernard Moffatt
General Secretary, Celtic League 

Kintyre crash should focus on overall safety record - 11-11-97

 The UK House of Commons Defence Select Committee will turn its attention this week to the Kintyre Chinook helicopter crash, in which 25 senior intelligence figures died together with all four crew men.

 The latest move comes after further revelations about faults with the helicopter type.

 The Chinook is, however, the most sensational scandal in a series involving the procurement, maintenance and operation of British support helicopters as the British struggled to meet commitments in N. Ireland and elsewhere over the past 15 years.

 The Commons Defence Committee would be better tasked to addressing the overall picture rather than facilitating a drip feed of information to the public in a process which appears to involve more damage limitation than openness.

 Over the past few years the Celtic League, which monitors all military activity across the Celtic areas, has pieced together an alarming picture: Overworked and poorly maintained equipment, procurement problems and no fleet wide upgrades for some ageing types, lessons and safety recommendations from earlier incidents ignored.

 Whilst modern machines like the Chinook HC2 were experiencing difficulties, MOD officials were scouring junkyards worldwide and were prepared, had the deal been clinched, to press into service seven obsolete Australian Air Force Chinook HC1s. Fortunately for both the aircrew who would have manned them and the troops who would have flown in them, the deal fell through. At Padarn Lake, Wales in 1993, an elderly Wessex helicopter plunged into a lake whilst ferrying several air cadets on an air experience flight. The accident was eventually ascribed to faulty maintenance and yet this helicopter type, which had no fleet wide upgrade in over thirty years of service, was already the subject of check recommendations after a crash in 1990. These recommendations appear to have been ignored and three of the teenage cadets died.

 A more blatant example of enquiry reports being ignored occurred in 1995 when a Gazelle helicopter crashed in the Wye valley: The crew were killed. The aircraft, it transpired, was not fitted with a radar altimeter despite a earlier crash enquiry in 1993 making this recommendation.

 Returning to the troubled Chinook, last year, again in Wales, a crewman was killed when he fell from an aircraft over the Pembroke, Castlemartin, range. The door on this recently modified HC2 machine had inexplicably detached. Again, the vexed subject of the security of helicopter doors was well known following earlier tragic crashes.

 In correspondence in July 1996 the MOD told us:

 "I can assure you that the circumstances of all aircraft incidents are investigated and any significant lessons learned are circulated widely within the service".

 However, our analysis is that this is not the case.

 More disturbingly, however, as in the Chinook enquiry and other sensitive military air crashes, there is a reluctance to publicise accurate information. In August 1996, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence, Earl Howe, tellingly stated in correspondence to the Celtic League:

 "All occurrences are of course investigated in a manner appropriate to their circumstances and significance. Details of each occurrence are maintained within the Royal Air Forces flight safety organisation. It is not however my Departments policy to make public detail of aircraft statistics relating to them.... I can assure you that this is not an attempt to 'cover up' the existence of such incidents and neither is it a reflection of my Departments investigative process."

 It had however taken the intervention of Nationalist MP Dafydd Wigley to elicit a reply to our concerns and despite what Earl Howe said at the time, we still believe there was and is a cover-up of which the Chinook crash at Kintyre is the most serious manifestation.

 The Defence Select Committee might like to extend its remit and encourage a public revelation of that which the MOD wants to hide.

 J B Moffatt
Celtic League

British Army helicopter crisis exposed - 31-10-97

 The saga of the £65 million pound helicopter aid scandal is now under investigation and was reported on September 19th, 1997 in the English "Guardian" newspaper.

 In 1993 the Celtic League learned of the bizarre shopping excursions worldwide, which included trips to Bombay by officials of the MOD and also an attempt to purchase obsolete versions of the Chinook helicopter from the R. Australian Air Force.

 By 1994, the situation had become so critical that the MOD deployed Royal Navy Sea King helicopters to the Province after a gap of 15 years. The crisis for garrisons in S. Armagh and the west of the Province, followed a disastrous engagement, in September 1993, between helicopters and IRA units armed with heavy machine guns in South Armagh. The engagement, in which the Republicans used both 7.62 and 12.7mm (1/2") machine guns, resulted in a review of tactics for heli-borne operations and also up-armouring of machines and weaponry. The Celtic League exposed the situation in May 1994.

 The complete collapse of the British Army's ability to maintain its garrisons in some areas was only averted by the first IRA ceasefire. The embarrassment of the period for the British government, suppressed at the time, now seems to have come back to haunt them.

 J B Moffatt