Gordon Brown killer of servicemen

The Sunday Times has a report on the Nimrod fire, linked here, this is a quote:

In August 2004 BAE Systems, the manufacturer, was asked to check to see if it would be safe to delay its replacement. BAE’s report warned that there had been 880 fires or “smoke-related incidents” on Nimrods in the past 22 years and that hot air pipes in the bomb bay were too close to the key elements of the fuel system. If a fire broke out in the bomb bay, there was no way of extinguishing it.

The report urged the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to fit a fire suppression system in the bomb bay, but the warning was ignored.

Jimmy Jones, a former RAF engineering officer who worked on the Nimrod trials, said: “If the MoD had acted on BAE Systems’ recommendations, those 14 crew members would still be alive today.”

In November 2004 a hot air pipe in the bomb bay of a Nimrod fractured as the craft came in to land at RAF Kinloss, Morayshire, blasting hot air onto the No 7 tank. An inquiry into that incident found the hot air would have been at least 50C above the spontaneous ignition point of the Nimrod’s Avtur fuel, which had begun to boil in the tank.

Disaster was averted only because the aircraft was on its way back to base. In his report on the incident, the station commander at Kinloss warned of more “unexpected failures” due to the aircraft’s age.