Mull of Kintyre Chinook crash in the spotlight 30 years on
Thirty years after the tragedy that claimed the lives of 29 people, the 1994 Mull of Kintyre Chinook helicopter crash is the subject of a two-part BBC documentary.
In what is considered the Royal Air Force’s worst peacetime disaster, a Chinook helicopter carrying almost all the UK’s leading Northern Ireland intelligence experts crashed into the hillside in thick foggy conditions on June 2, 1994.
All 25 passengers – including members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, MI5 and the British Army – and four crew on board were killed.
They had been travelling from RAF Aldergrove near Belfast to a security conference in Inverness two months before the 1994 IRA ceasefire.
Controversy still surrounds the investigations into the crash, the cause of which has never been confirmed, with politicians and victims’ family members among those who campaigned for documents relating to the crash not to be destroyed by the Ministry of Defence (MoD).
The RAF initially blamed the pilots for the crash, leading to a 14-year campaign to successfully clear their names.
Now, in the BBC’s Chinook: Zulu Delta 576 documentary, experts offer their thoughts on what went wrong that night as journalists uncover what the MoD and RAF did not want the families and general public to know.
Chinook: Zulu Delta 576 was broadcast on BBC One Northern Ireland at 10.40pm yesterday (Monday, January 29) and will be broadcast on BBC Scotland at 10pm tonight (Tuesday, January 30). It will also be available on BBC iPlayer.
The crash also features in the book Phoenix: Policing the Shadows, co-written by Jack Holland and Susan Phoenix, the wife of crash victim Detective Superintendent Ian Phoenix.
The book has recently been turned into an audiobook, narrated by Susan and Ian’s son Niven.
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