Inquest call to ground Nimrods

A coroner called today for the RAF’s entire Nimrod fleet to be grounded after ruling that an aircraft which crashed in Afghanistan killing 14 servicemen had never been airworthy.

Assistant deputy coroner for Oxford Andrew Walker said that opportunities to spot inherent dangers on the ageing plane were missed.

He said a design fault which led to it exploding just minutes after undergoing air-to-air refuelling went unnoticed.

Mr Walker recorded narrative verdicts on the deaths of the 14 personnel killed in the explosion near Kandahar on September 2 2006 following an inquest at Oxford’s Old Assizes.

Among the dead was Flt Sgt Gerard Martin Bell, 48, formerly of Brookside, Telford, who had moved to Forres in Scotland.

Mr Walker said: “The crew and passengers were not to know that this aircraft, like every other in the Nimrod fleet, was not airworthy.

“The aircraft was never airworthy from the first release to service in 1969.”The crash, which happened as the crew prepared for landing following a secret mission in Afghanistan, was the biggest single loss of life suffered by the military since the Falklands War.

Twelve of the men who died were from 120 Squadron based at RAF Kinross in Forres. Two servicemen who were attached to the squadron also died.

The inquest, sitting at Oxford’s Old Assizes, has heard two weeks of evidence about repeated fuel leaks from the Nimrod fuel tanks.