§ Mr. Corfieldasked the Secretary of State for Defence if he is now in a position to make a statement on the findings of the Board of Inquiry into an accident to a Shackleton of the Royal Air Force on 19th April, 1968.
§ Mr. Merlyn ReesWhen I made a statement in the House on 23rd April on the findings of the boards of inquiry into three recent Shackleton accidents, I said that I would make a further statement as 85W soon as possible about a fourth accident which occurred at the Southern tip of the Mull of Kintyre on 19th April.
Inquiry proceedings on this accident are now complete. The aircraft, which was on an anti-submarine training exercise, struck rising ground at 415 feet about a quarter of a mile inland in cloud. After an exhaustive examination no evidence has been found that the accident was caused by any failure or malfunction of the engines, propellers, airframe or flying controls. There does not appear to have been a state of emergency in the aircraft before the accident and examination of the engines indicates that they were producing power consistent with cruising flight. In the circumstances it seems clear that the immediate cause of the accident was an error of navigation. The reason for this error cannot however be determined and a radar malfunction of some kind cannot be ruled out as a contributory factor.
In my earlier statement I said that no common factor could be discovered in the first three accidents or in what we then knew of the fourth. I can now confirm that extremely thorough investigation of this fourth accident has not led to the identification of any common factor.