TUESDAY 16 OCTOBER 2001

SQUADRON LEADER ROBERT BURKE

  651. Squadron Leader Burke, in 1994 at the time the ZD 576 crashed you were the unit test pilot at Odiham, is that right?
  (Squadron Leader Burke) That is correct.

  652. Would you be good enough to tell us about your experience as a pilot of Chinooks, in particular Mark IIs?

  A. I will give you my flying hours, I have flown something over 8,000 hours in total, of which my time in helicopters has been over 7,500 hours. About 3,500 hours has been test flying and over 2,000 in the Chinook, of which 450 hours was in the Chinook Mark II. Of that time, approaching 6,500 hours, I was in command of helicopters, there were nearly all support helicopters, usually twin-engined helicopters.

  653. Just remind me, when did the Chinook Mark II first come into service, was it some time early in 1994?

  A. I am not an expert on the exact date that it came into service, a few Chinooks appeared in England, one for use at Boscombe Down and others went to the training establishment of the 27th Squadron, the 240 OCU. When it was operationally serviceable it is difficult to define, we know when the first one went to Northern Ireland, otherwise they were used primarily for training, the few that we had.

  654. What was the general attitude of the Service to Chinook Mark IIs during the early part of 1994? What did pilots who flew the Chinook feel about it in general?

  A. I can only talk generally. No, in fact I can talk quite particularly because I had feelings on the subject myself and, because of my slightly anomalous position at Odiham, being a unit of one, as it were, lots of people of all ranks, particularly air crew and ground crew came and talked to me privately. The Chinook Mark I was an extremely capable helicopter but not totally reliable. It was replaced by the Chinook Mark II—people love the Chinook, it is a fantastic aircraft—but in that period on the Chinook Mark II there was considerable unease. I speak from first hand experience, and from talking to lots of people directly, about the speed at which this aircraft had been brought into service, particularly in the area of the FADEC. It was felt that neither the RAF, and in my personal view some of the Boeing personnel, knew all they should have known about FADEC. There was considerable unease amongst all aircrew, not just pilots, but rear crew and amongst a number of ground crew as well.

  655. Were you personally involved in an incident at the Boeing factory in Philadelphia?

  A. I was, my Lord. I have sent you a copy of something I wrote. I had two run ups on the ground when flying with an American army test pilot, Mr Richardson, who was accepting Chinooks at Boeing. The RAF was unable to find records of it initially for the House of Commons Defence Select Committee meeting. As I was the co-pilot of the aircraft concerned, because I was flying as the co-pilot with the American Army test pilot, I did insist that a full conference was called and the RAF United Kingdom Chinook Liaison Officer, there was a wing commander over there, took decisive action on this and a conference was called—I will describe the incident in a moment—with everybody who we thought should be there, including Lycoming reps. We decided to run the aircraft again—I will talk about the incident in some slight detail in a moment—we ran it on the ground the next day and the aircraft did the same thing. We swapped over pilots in case the aircrew were not happy. I might say that the US Army Air Corps test pilots knew as much about the Chinook and FADEC as I did, which was not a great deal. We ran the aircraft again the next day[1] and it was perfect and there was no record of any failure. The incident was a run up on the ground and I think it was while we were testing the `Beeb' Authority on the system and the aircraft ran away up—I have to read this, it was written a long time ago—to 108 per cent rotorspeed. Just for interest, when I wrote this report out much later in England, because the RAF could not find any records of this, I also sent to MOD a note about another incident when I was flying at Boeing with a civilian Boeing test pilot. We either had a freeze or a run-down in the hover outside on the apron of Philadelphia. I have given you the name of the pilot and one of two dates when it happened. The first date is more likely but we had a long chat about it and I think that it was probably mishandling because of a misunderstanding of the FADEC system by the Boeing test pilot. I do not know what action was taken by Boeing, I left it to the test pilot himself to take the necessary action when we got in. These two incidents I witnessed personally. I was involved in the aircraft in every case.

  656. Before you started I should have asked you; you are now retired?

  A. I have been retired just over four years now.

  657. Also I should have thanked you for providing the Committee with the various pieces of documents which you have done which will no doubt make our task—

  A. I am afraid they were culled from my loft, my Lord, so they might be a bit tatty. I happened to find quite a lot of them.

  658. It certainly makes our task very much easier. Thank you. I think that we have been told that immediately after the crash or very shortly afterwards you were approached by the Air Accident Investigation Board; is that right.

  A. That is correct, my Lord. I was contacted by Mr Tony Cable to add my expertise to his. You have heard from the AAIB about how they work, a small unit of international repute but they do (because there are so few of them) lack expertise on the particular aircraft types and indeed the inspectors inspect accidents in rotation so you might have somebody who is totally unfamiliar with an aircraft type. So they rely for specialist knowledge on either the manufacturers or aircrew who are flying the aircraft. Two RAF technicians, I am trying to remember their names, Sergeant Tighe was one and there was also a chief tec electronics technician or avionics technician, who were assigned to Mr Cable to help him. He rang up Odiham to ask who was the best person to give him some advice and he rang me up. I do not know how many telephone conversations we had, I think it was possibly about three I would guess.

  659. Then were you given instructions not to discuss the matter further?

  A. Yes, my Lord. I can be very specific about this. With the passage of time perhaps some things get blurred, but I can give precisely what was happening although not the precise date. I was actually in the 27 Squadron hangar with a Chinook which was undergoing repair. That Chinook had been lent to the AAIB technicians Sergeant Tighe and the Chief Tech whose name I cannot remember. They and I had the aircraft on jacks with the gyros disconnected so you could wobble the aircraft's main gyro to simulate what we thought the condition of the aircraft might have been when it crashed. There was a very strange DASH extension on the aircraft and nobody could work it out. The Boeing simulation went into that later. We got actually fairly close to working out exactly what was happening and at midday right in the middle of this I got a message to go and see, I think he may have been, the Acting Station Commander at the time, my immediate boss, Wing Commander John Cooke. He called me into his office and sat me down and said, "I have had instructions that you are not to continue to help in this investigation in any way." I will give you a little background on this to show why I can be so specific about it. Wing Commander Cooke had worked under me as a sergeant crewman and I had taken a particular interest in his career, helping him get commissioned and making reports on him all the way up until he finally became my boss, so we obviously had a very close relationship. He talked to me, we were both sitting down. Before I left the office I stood up by the door and I said very formally, "Wing Commander Cooke, is this a direct order or is this a request?" And he put it in exactly these words, "This is a direct order, Bob, you are not to discuss this crash with anyone. You are not to approach anyone. If anybody asks for information do not give it." I said, "Can I speak to my oppos about it" and he said, "No, you are to speak to no-one about it and that is a direct order." I went back and told the people I was working with on the aircraft that I had been pulled off it and from that moment I did not take any interest in the crash. I did; but I did not talk to anyone about it until I left the Service.