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Britain's airforce criticized over deaths of servicemen in Iraq

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

London, Oct 22, IRNA

UK-Iraq

An inquest into the deaths of ten British servicemen killed in Iraq when their Hercules aircraft was shot down Wednesday condemned the behaviour of the country's air force.

Coroner David Masters also criticised the US for not allowing any of its troops, who witnessed the 2005 incident to give evidence at the inquest, held in Wiltshire, western England.

"The stance taken by the US is difficult to comprehend," Masters said. "I just wonder, as an aside, what if the boot had been on the other foot - if a US aircraft had come down with the loss of 10 lives and the only eye-witnesses had been British forces?" he said.

The coroner was giving a narrative verdict on the shooting down of the Hercules, killing all on board the flight from Baghdad to Balad in the largest loss of air force lives in a hostile act since World War II.

The inquest, he said, had been "plagued by an inability to retrieve documents" recording key decisions prior to the crash. The criticism referred in particular to an apparently unrecorded decision taken by commanders not to fit a key safety feature.

The ring wing of the aircraft exploded after being shot by insurgents on the ground but it was found that a military research document from 2002 had not been acted upon about the vulnerability of the fuel tanks that caused the explosion.

Had the aircraft's wing tanks been fitted with explosion suppressant foam (ESF), which stops explosions, the men would be alive today, former Hercules pilot Nigel Gilbert earlier told the inquest.

"I believe that the ability to retrieve and view documents that record key decisions as not just important, but essential - equally important is the rationale behind them," Masters said.

It was revealed at the inquest that not only was the ESF not fitted but that the Hercules crews were not even told of the danger they were in, which would at least have enabled them to alter their flying tactics.

The plane was brought down when a medium-calibre anti-aircraft weapon hit a fuel tank in the right wing, while witnesses told the inquest the crew had been flying low to avoid the threat of surface- to-air missiles through a known ambush zone.

Wing Commander John Reid, president of the military Board of Inquiry which investigated the tragedy, said this failure to tell the crews made him even more "cross" than the decision not to fit ESF.

The coroner issued a verdict that the 10 British servicemen were "unlawfully killed by terrorist insurgents."