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Mark · Site Admin Joined: 13 Nov 2007 Posts: 1052

Ground Nimrod fleet, says Coroner

http://ukpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5gRHIUseo2U9dWSQtxeyBuiFrzlDA

Excerpt:

The entire RAF fleet of Nimrod aircraft has never been airworthy and should be grounded, a coroner has ruled.

Fourteen servicemen died when a Nimrod spy plane exploded in mid-air in September 2006, minutes after undergoing air-to-air refuelling.

Assistant Deputy Coroner for Oxford Andrew Walker said the entire fleet, which is based at RAF Kinloss in Forres, Scotland, was "unsafe to fly". "The crew and passengers were not to know that this aircraft, like every other in the Nimrod fleet, was not airworthy," Mr Walker said. "What is more the aircraft was, in my judgment, never airworthy from the first release to service in 1969."

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