At 5.42 p.m. on June 2nd, 1994, Chinook helicopter ZD 576 takes off from RAF Aldergrove near Belfast with 25 senior RUC, MI5, army anti-terrorist officers and civil servants on board as well as four RAF crew. The security personnel are heading to a terrorism conference at Fort George, near Inverness.
The weather deteriorates as the aircraft crosses the northern channel of the Irish Sea and thick fog shrouds the Mull of Kintyre. At about 5.59 p.m. the helicopter crashes into the southern tip of the mull and all 29 people on board are killed.
An RAF board of inquiry acting on behalf of the Ministry of Defence finds the two pilots, Flight Lieuts Jonathan Tapper and Rick Cook, probably selected an inappropriate rate of climb over the mull, but makes no finding of negligence.
However, a year after the crash, two air vice marshals - Sir John Day and Sir William Wratten - overturn the board of inquiry's finding, concluding the pilots were guilty of negligence "to a gross degree".
In 1999 pressure mounts on the British government to reopen the inquiry after Computer Weekly magazine says the original investigation was "fundamentally flawed" because it was not told about problems with the Chinook fleet's on-board computers.
On February 5th, 2002, a report from a House of Lords select committee unanimously concludes the air vice-marshals were "not justified" in finding the pilots guilty of gross negligence. It says it cannot be proved beyond doubt that the pilots intended to fly over the mull or that some mechanical failure had not caused a loss of control of the aircraft.