Families hear final words of aircrew
The brother of a former Shropshire airman, one of 14 servicemen killed when a Nimrod spy plane crashed,has described hearing a recording of his brother's last moments as "very traumatic".
Families of those who died when the aircraft exploded mid-air heard a tape of the radio communications during the flight.
The cockpit recording was played at Oxford Coroner's Court where an inquest into the men's deaths is being held.
Michael Bell, brother of Flight Sergeant Gerard Bell, said outside court: "It was a very traumatic hearing. It was the first time we had heard it."
Mr Bell, fighting back tears, added: "They were professional and did not show any emotion. They did their job in the way you would expect British servicemen to operate.
"There was no panic in their voices. In their minds they were going to land at Kandahar then the tape went blank."
Gerard Bell, 48, grew up in Brookside, Telford. He and his wife Fiona, formerly from Newport, were both educated at the Blessed Robert Johnson College in Wellington.
Until today the families had seen only a transcript of the stricken crew's airborne communications.
Oxford Coroner's Court was cleared so that they could hear the recording from Nimrod XV 230 in private.
The 37-year-old reconnaissance aircraft exploded in a ball of flames just minutes after undergoing air-to-air refuelling near Kandahar on September 2, 2006.
An RAF Board of Inquiry (BoI) into the loss of the plane found that ageing components and a lack of modern fire suppressants were among the "contributory factors"which led to the accident.
The BoI found that the most probable cause of the crash was an escape of fuel during the air-to-air refuelling, either as a result of an overflow or a leakage from the aircraft's fuel system.
The fuel flowed back into a dry bay near the aircraft's No 7 fuel tank, and ignited after coming into contact with an exposed hot air pipe.
By David Burrows
