The RAF Chinook helicopter crashed in the Mull of Kintyre, Scotland, and killed 25 passengers and four crew members
It has been 30 years since 25 of the UK’s top intelligence experts – including those from MI5 – were killed in an RAF helicopter crash.
The RAF Chinook helicopter went down on the Mull of Kintyre, Scotland, on June 2 1994, in foggy conditions killing all 29 on board, including four crew members.
It had been travelling from RAF Aldergrove in Northern Ireland to a security conference in Inverness just two months before the 1994 IRA ceasefire.
Air Chief Marshal Sir William Wratten called the crash ‘the largest peacetime tragedy the RAF had suffered’.
To date, the accident is the RAFs fourth-worst peacetime disaster.
At the time Northern Ireland Secretary Sir Patrick Mayhew said the Chinooks had a ‘remarkable’ safety record and none of the remaining aircraft in the fleet were grounded.
Questions were asked over why so many officials from MI5, the Army, and the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) were on the same helicopter.
The wreckage of the Chinook helicopter after the crash (Picture: PA)
Wreckage of the Chinook helicopter which crashed on the Mull of Kintyre killing all 29 on board (Picture: PA)
Flight Lieutenants Jonathan Tapper (left) and Richard Cook, the two pilots of the RAF Chinook (Picture: PA)
The exact cause of the crash is still a mystery even after multiple investigations spanning decades.
Conspiracy theories that circulated included wake turbulence from a secret hypersonic US aircraft was responsible for the crash.
Another theory suggested it was an assassination carried out in connection with the ongoing Northern Ireland peace process.
The loss of so many top level Northern Ireland intelligence officers in one stroke was a huge blow to John Major’s Conservative government, ‘temporarily confounding’ its campaign against the IRA.
People lay a bouquet of 29 red roses symbolising the 29 people killed in the crash (Picture: PA)
A memorial to people lost as a result of the crash sits at the crash site (Picture: PA)
Politicians, victims’ family members, and the Church of Scotland, were among those who campaigned for documents relating to the crash not to be destroyed by the Ministry of Defence.
The RAF were criticised for its board of inquiry’s findings that gross negligence on the part of the two pilots was to blame.
Eventually the two men, Flt Lt Jonathan Tapper and Flt Lt Richard Cook, were exonerated after a two-decade campaign led by their families.
A Memorial on Mull of Kintrye now sits at the crash site in memory of the victims of the crash.
The crash was the subject of a two-part BBC Northern Ireland documentary called Chinook: Zulu Delta 576, which aired in January of this year.
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It explored the impact of what happened and the devastation caused to relatives of Tapper and Cook.
The crash has also featured in the book Phoenix: Policing the Shadows, co-written by Jack Holland and Susan Phoenix, the wife of crash victim Detective Superintendent Ian Phoenix.
Although the cause is still unknown, most likely causes include instrument or mechanical failure, or a bird strike.
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