Nimrod Families to meet Armed Forces Minister

RAF Nimrod crash update

09/07/2008

Family members of the 14 servicemen killed in an RAF Nimrod crash will meet with Bob Ainsworth, the Armed Forces Minister at 2pm on Thursday, July 10.

The meeting comes 7 weeks after the assistant deputy coroner for Oxford, Andrew Walker, called for the RAF’s entire Nimrod fleet to be grounded after a 3 week inquest heard that a fuel leak caused the aircraft to explode near Kanadhar on September 2, 2006.

Within minutes of the verdict being delivered a statement was issued by the MoD insisting that the fleet was airworthy.

Mr Robert Dicketts, father of 27 year old Lance Corporal Oliver Simon Dicketts who was killed in the explosion called for the meeting on behalf of the victim’s families by writing to the Ministry of Defence in a letter which read: "First of all we were all very upset that you felt able to make an immediate comment about the airworthiness of the Nimrod fleet before you even had the chance to read the coroner's verdict.

"Bearing in mind the seriousness of the matter we would have thought that you should have first read it, and then called in your experts to advise you before making any comments.

"It is clear to us that your experts have completely different information to that which we heard in the coroner's court over the three weeks of the hearing.

"In view of this we would ask that we have a meeting to both review your expert's evidence and that which we heard.

"As you may now be aware, the experts that the coroner and ourselves heard have, in several cases, stated quite clearly that the fleet is still not airworthy.

"In those cases where the experts thought the plane was still airworthy, they have had, in some cases, their evidence discredited."

Andrew Tucker from law firm Irwin Mitchell said: “The statement given by the MoD was immediate and as such could not have considered all of the evidence given at the inquest by the leading experts and crew men involved in the crash.

“The families are calling for the government to confirm that the crucial recommendation made by deputy coroner for Oxford, Andrew Walker is actioned and that the fleet is grounded until airworthy to ensure an accident like this cannot happen again.”

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