Transcript: On a Wing and a Prayer

NB: THIS TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A TRANSCRIPTION UNIT RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT: BECAUSE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF MIS-HEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY, IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS ACCURACY.

---

PANORAMA
On a Wing and a Prayer
RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION: BBC ONE
DATE: 04:06:07

---

JEREMY VINE: Hello, I'm Jeremy Vine and this is Panorama. Britain's spy in the sky. It can spot a Taliban soldier from 40,000 feet and help direct missiles to their target. But the crewmen who fly it are worried.

SHONA BEATTIE: One day Steve came back and he just said: "There's something just not right here."

LAURA ROBSON: He was always saying that there was going to be an accident, a serious one.

VINE: There was ? 14 died. Now Panorama has uncovered a catalogue of problems with the Nimrod and asks if the plane should have been flying at all.

It entered service in 1969, the year Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, and it's served its country well. But when Nimrod XV230 crashed in the wastes of Afghanistan 9 months ago, there were some who were not surprised. The equipment on board may have been state of the art, but the plane itself was far from it. What's made it harder for the families of those on board to bear is that the Americans have already replaced many of their planes with drones. No pilots, no passengers, no risk.

SHELLEY JOFRE: A relentless war against an enemy that's impossible to track on the ground but there's no escaping the eye in the sky. Day and night Britain's Nimrod spy planes fly miles above the war zone homing in on insurgents below using sophisticated surveillance equipment. With this technology they can feed back vital intelligence in real time to ground troops. But this 21st century war is being fought with planes from a bygone era. RAF insiders tell Panorama the aging Nimrod is operating on a wing and a prayer. Putting his career on the line to tell us the truth about the planes he flies in, these are the words spoken by an actor of an RAF Nimrod crewman just back from the Gulf.

Words of serving Nimrod crew member - spoken by an actor
ANON: All sorts of equipment has failed. We've had problems with engines that we've had to shut down, fuel leaks are on the increase, there are more problems with the aircraft than we've ever had. The bottom line is her age.

JOFRE: In a sleepy corner of North East Scotland lies RAF Kinloss. The 15 strong Nimrod fleet has been based here for the best part of 40 years, carrying out search and rescue missions and military surveillance operations. It's a loyal military community well used to the peace being punctured by the roar of the mighty Hunter. Most of the men who died in Afghanistan last September lived locally with their families.

RAYNA QUILLIAM: Gary absolutely adored the Nimrods, it was his dream, the mighty Rod, the mighty Hunter, all the things that had any relevance to it whatsoever. We'd sit in the conservatory on a regular basis and at any time of the day or night we might be sitting there and a Nimrod would go over and he'd jump off his seat, stare out the window and try and figure out who was in the aircraft, or whether it was a search and rescue flight. It was just completely part of his life and he didn't want to be away from them, and it's such a tragedy and it's a really difficult thing to believe that he... sorry... (emotional) ... that he ended up dying in one. (sobs) I'm sorry.

JOFRE: Other families here share that sense of disbelief. Shona Beattie's children are two of 18 who've been left fatherless by the crash.

Steve was a really nice guy, really friendly, really funny, enjoyed his job in the Nimrods. He was doing the job he loved when he died.

JOFRE: Steve knew the risks of going to war, but shortly before his death he confided in his wife, it was the state of the Nimrod that most worried him.

SHONA BEATTIE: One day Steve came back from work and he just said: "There's something just not right here. It's just getting.. you know, that every time we go to take off there's something wrong with the plane" and he just said: "It's not the same as it used to be, you know, there weren't so many faults before." And it was just his eyes. I wish I'd asked him more, but I didn't.

JOFRE: Co-pilot Steve Swarbrick also confided in his partner, something she's never spoken about publicly until now.

LAURA ROBSON: He was always complaining about the fact that flights were always delayed because then there was maintenance issues. Planes are cannibalised basically because there's a certain part that they need to... from one plane to go to another plane so they can take off. So those two planes can't be in the air at the same time. I think one time they did take off but they found something wrong with the plane so they had to dump all the fuel and then land again. So he was always saying that there was going to be an accident, a serious one.

SHELLEY JOFRE: In fact we've discovered that there's deep unease among the Nimrod crews about the planes they're having to fly in. We've been told of at least two serious incidents in the air that happened before the crash at Kandahar. The first of these was in 2004 on a routine flight from Kinloss on one of the oldest planes in service.

LOCATION: North Sea
DATE: November 2004 ANON: Basically a hole had developed in one of the heating pipes and superheated air was blasting against the air frame, and it bumped through cabling and netting. Seal around the fuel tanks was damaged as well, and that is really serious.

JOFRE: These photographs, taken for the incident investigation, have been passed on to us by another RAF insider. You can see the damaged area in a section of wing. Inside the bomb bay cables are charred by the heat, and a pipe near the fuel tank is actually ruptured.

Words of serving Nimrod crew member - spoken by an actor
ANON: If you've got fuels that are melting on fuel tanks and that fuel is then allowed to leak, you know these are conditions where they could ignite.

ANON: Chances are, if they had flown for a few hours more we may have lost them, and the crew knew nothing at all about it. It was only when they landed that the damage was discovered.

JOFRE: This is the Nimrod before the incident. On the day it happened the plane had been checked and passed as safe to fly. The damage took several months to repair. It has since been taken out of service altogether.

LOCATION: Gibralter
DATE: June 2006

JOFRE: In June 2006 another lucky escape. We've discovered that a different Nimrod had to make an emergency landing in Gibraltar, shedding large amounts of fuel on the way down. Two serious incidents both calling into question the safety of a fleet of planes nearly 40 years old, planes that were not originally designed to fly in the scorching heat.

INSTRUCTING OFFICER: Right, good morning gentlemen. The tapestry sortie for today is in the North West area here.

VINE: 6.30 in the morning and the crew of an RAF Nimrod assemble in the operations room at Kinloss airbase for an hour long briefing.

JOFRE: The Nimrod is based on the old Comet passenger jet which started flying shortly after the Second World War. The spy planes were introduced at the height of the Cold War in 1969 to hunt Soviet submarines deep in the North Atlantic. It was a mission they fulfilled with an impeccable safety record for over a quarter of a century. But, in 1995, a Nimrod with engine problems was supposed to ditch into the sea off Kinloss.

LOCATION: Moray Firth, Scotland
DATE: May 1995

Reporting Scotland, May 1995
The drama began at 11.22 this morning, less than half an hour after the plane had taken off for its first flight since being grounded at Kinloss for six months for full-scale maintenance.

JOFRE: Amazingly no one was hurt, but the Nimrod was showing her age even then. She was supposed to have reached the end of her shelf life that very year. In the absence of a replacement though, she has soldiered on ever since performing crucial surveillance for the RAF.

LOCATION: Kandahar, Afghanistan
DATE: 2 September 2006

Then on September 2nd last year the news that every military family dreads.

[NEWS] Fourteen British military personnel have been killed in a plane crash in Afghanistan. It's the biggest loss of life in a single day since British forces began fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq five years ago. The victims were all on board an I.F. Nimrod which had been down in southern....

SHONA: I just saw two blue uniforms through the door and I screamed.

LAURA: And during all this time I would have been texting Steve and phoning him just asking him to let me know that he was okay.

RAYNA: We were just told that Gary was missing and presumed killed, at which point I... I didn't believe them.

LAURA: Then the car drove past with two guys in it coming to tell me that they were in accident and missing presumed dead.

[Remembrance Service]
Fourteen ordinary men or fourteen heroes, it matters not. What matters is that the respect, love, friendship and camaraderie in which they were all held is reflected in our attendance here today, a band of brothers who paid the ultimate sacrifice.

JOFRE: But was it a sacrifice that could have been avoided. The Ministry of Defence says the plane wasn't shot down and there's no hint that pilot error was to blame. So was it a technical fault? The RAF set up a board of inquiry into the crash straight afterwards and the top brass have urged families to wait and see what it concludes. Nine months on the families and crews are still waiting for answers. What is known is that shortly after refuelling in mid air there was a fire on board. Is that what caused the plane to crash? And what about the other planes that are still flying, are they safe? We've discovered that the entire fleet has been plagued by fuel leaks in recent years.

JIMMY: The fuel problems that occurred after in-flight refuelling, which occurs at high pressure, the tank forces fuel through at very high pressure.

JOFRE: Jimmy knows Nimrods inside out. As an RAF engineer he used to investigate serious faults with the planes. He thinks air-to-air refuelling is causing many of the leaks.

Flt Long-term JIMMY JONES, Former Nimrod Engineer: In-flight refuelling, as you may not be aware, was never part of the original... as original fit. It was never.. can I say, designed into the system from the original Nimrod concept.

JOFRE: In fact it was a quick fix made during the Falklands War. Britain wanted its spy planes down in the South Atlantic quickly, but it was too far for the Nimrods to fly. Refuelling in midair was celebrated as the answers.

June 1983

Did you have a comfortable flight?

MARGARET THATCHER: We had a very comfortable flight. It's quite a new experience. We were refuelled twice on the flight.

JIMMY JONES: As far as I'm concerned the people who did the modification, who I knew, I've spoken to them. It was never seen as an ongoing day-to-day means of operation.

JOFRE: But that's exactly what it has become. In the Middle East crews are flying non-stop 14 hour missions and in-flight refuelling is being used more than ever. Could this added strain on such old planes explain the increase in fuel leaks? Yes, according to one crewman just back from the Gulf.

Words of serving Nimrod crew member - spoken by an actor
ANON: When you put two huge aircraft 40 feet apart there's a huge amount of turbulence and stress on the airframe and don't forget it's a 40 year old aircraft going from plus 50° centigrade to minus 40° centrigrade, there's seals that don't know if they're supposed to expand or contract. Those seals are on fuel pipes so leakages are an ongoing problem.

JOFRE: The armed forces minister has admitted there have in fact been 25 fuel leaks on Nimrods in the five months up to March alone. He says safety was never compromised but that's not what we've been told. We know of one leak just eight weeks after Kandahar that was very serious indeed.

LOCATION: Afghanistan
DATE: November 2006

JIMMY JONES: There was another incident on the 8th November, again in the Gulf, same theatre of operation as the one on the 2nd September. That was a broken fuel pipe within the bomb bay.

JOFRE: We've discovered that an air incident report was filed by the crew, something that's only done for unusual events that require detailed investigation. The cause was found to be a leaking fuel pipe coupling which happened again after air-to-air refuelling.

How serious is something like that in your view?

JONES: Well that could have been as serious as the one we'd lost in September.

JOFRE: It could have brought the plane down.

JONES: Absolutely. It could have been... I said, a replication of that.

JOFRE: The head of the RAF admits there have been problems with air-to-air refuelling but insists it's nothing to worry about.

There are a lot of people concerned that air-to-air refuelling might have had something to do with what happened at Kandahar. Are you satisfied that it's actually safe/

Sir GLENN TORPY, RAF Air Chief Marshal: I am, and it's exactly the same as the rest of the integrity of the aircraft. It has been a focus for understandable reasons, and we did suspend air-to-air refuelling for a period in November. We looked at what we were doing both in terms of integrity of the system, the way we were actually conducting the air-to-air refuelling and I'm satisfied that the way we're now doing it is just safe as it needs to be.

JOFRE: But how safe is that. Soon after refuelling procedures were revised another serious problem happened, again following air-to-air refuelling.

LOCATION: Gulf Area
DATE: December 2006

Last November on landing in the Gulf a Nimrod crew discovered pools of fuel in the aircraft's bomb bay. Again an air incident report was filed. This time the investigation recommended that pipe work seals should be examined and replaced as necessary. Earlier this year more trouble when the MoD temporarily grounded the whole Nimrod fleet for safety reasons.

LOCATION: Kinloss, Scotland
DATE: February 2007
Reporting Scotland, February 2007

Leaks, or at least dents, have been found in the fuel lines of two planes at RAF Kinloss. These have been taken out of service but I understand this evening that some other Nimrod aircraft within that fleet at Kinloss have been cleared to fly.

JOFRE: Twenty-five fuel leaks in five months. Is that a lot?

TORPY: It's a lot. I would always like to see the figure reduced to the absolutely lowest minimum.

JOFRE: It sounds like a lot.

TORPY: If you look over the last ten years, the level of fuel leaks that we've had has remained pretty constant over those ten years.

JOFRE: But let's look at the five months up to March, there were 25 fuel leaks, some of them really quite serious. Are you concerned about that?

TORPY: I am very concerned about it, and that's why we have made sure that we analysed every single incidence. There are no underlying themes.

JOFRE: But does that reassure the men and women who have to deal with these fuel leaks? They're working the planes harder than ever as fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan has intensified. During a recent visit to the Middle East one MP claims he found air crews stretched to the limit.

What sort of concerns did they present to you when you spoke to them face-to-face?

IAN LIDDELL-GRAINGER MP, Conservative, Bridgwater: They are the most incredibly professional people. They, at any price, will go up and fly and come back day after day. But there is a crisis of morale because they just feel that they cant take much more and that's just human. There is a worry about the aircraft, there's no doubt about that. And there is a worry that some time in the future something is going to go wrong again.

JOFRE: With no end in sight to the war, low morale is hardly surprising, especially after losing so many friends at Kandahar. But it's more than that according to one former Air Vice-Marshal who's still in touch with serving RAF personnel.

What are you hearing informally about the state of the Nimrod fleet?

BRIAN ROBINSON, RAF Air Vice-Marshal (1956-1991): I'm told that it's diabolical and I think that sums it up adequately. It's worse than it's ever, ever been and it's not going to get any better. I think if I were back in the service now I'd be tearing my hair out at the situation.

JOFRE: And no wonder. We've discovered that on average throughout last year two thirds of the 15 strong Nimrod fleet were effectively grounded. By the Ministry of Defence's own admission, that means only 5 out of 15 were fit for purpose.

Sir GLENN TORPY, RAF Air Chief Marshal: In terms of air craft availability, today we have six aircraft up at Kinloss available for a crew to fly, which is the best we've had for the last nine months, and I think that is actually indicative of the effort that we've put in to the whole of the fleet up at Kinloss.

JOFRE: But with two thirds of the fleet grounded on average last year, I mean... are you happy with that?

TORPY: No, I'm not happy with it.

Words of serving Nimrod crew member - spoken by an actor
ANON: A big problem is lack of spares and all the ground crew can do if they have to get something airborne ? and this is just commonsense ? is to cannibalise the other aircrafts that are sitting on the tarmac.

BRIAN ROBINSON, RAF Air Vice-Marshal (1956-1991): That's okay for maybe the one-off occasion or maybe one or two occasions, but when it becomes the only way that you can actually keep your fleet running is by robbing half the fleet, so you've got half the fleet unserviceable to keep the other half going, the service is at total overstretch. It's been committed to too many tasks with inadequate resources. They're trying to do a full pint job with half pint in resources and that cannot go on. It has to change.

JOFRE: It's costing a staggering three million pounds a year to maintain each plane. Last year the government pledged even more money but it may be too late, there's another problem. Disillusioned air crew are leaving the service in droves.

Words of serving Nimrod crew member - spoken by an actor ANON: Five years ago it would be very rare for people to leave the RAF voluntarily. Recently nearly every senior pilot in the training unit put in a request to leave. These are guys that are military through and through. If they're jumping ship, you've got to ask yourself why.

ROBINSON: All those of us in the UK with military experience who have the interests of our country at heart are horrified to see the extent to which our hardworking, devoted services are being prostituted by inadequate levels of understanding and support.

JOFRE: The Parliamentary Defence Select Committee actually acknowledged last year before the crash that there were critical weaknesses in the readiness levels of the Nimrod Fleet. The harsh truth is there's simply no alternative, although there was supposed to be.

[NEWS]
The RAF's 25 year old Nimrod Maritime Patrol Aircraft is to be updated with new engines and avionics following the award of a two billion pound contract to British Aerospace in July.

JOFRE: Way back in 1996 the MoD acknowledge that Nimrod was past her best and announced an expensive face lift for the fleet.

[NEWS]
The new systems will keep the aircraft effective well into the next century.

JOFRE: Sounds impressive, so where is it? Well successive governments have kept tinkering with the order causing one delay after another.

IAN LIDDELL-GRAINGER, Conservative, Bridgwater: I seem to remember the replacements everyone talked about in the 80s when we had the Iron Curtain and they hunted submarines around the North Sea. But to take this long and still not to be in service, I think it's embarrassing. I think it's embarrassing for the nation, I think it's appalling that we haven't sorted this out.

JOFRE: This is the new Nimrod on a test flight last year. The whole project is now nearly two billion pounds over budget and more than a decade late. It's a mess that could ultimately have cost the lives of 14 men with 200 years of military service between them.

Words of serving Nimrod crew member - spoken by an actor
ANON: If we don't see the new Nimrods until 2011 I don't think at the rate we're being asked to work at, at the moment, that we'd be able to nurse the old fleet until then. But what's worse in my view is that we wouldn't have lost 14 men over Kandahar if they'd been flying in the new Nimrod. I don't think they would have been killed.

LIDDEL:GRAINGER: Why should these people put themselves at risk on our behalf when we can't get what they deserve which is a good airframe. You've got an aircraft that's extremely old. The guys that maintain it, the guys that look after it, the senior commanders, they're doing what they can to keep that thing flying as long as they can until we get the replacement.

JOFRE: Which prompts a bigger question about the role that Nimrod's being asked to fulfil out in the Middle East. Should Britain still be sending crews on spying missions at all when a similar job is done by our coalition partners without putting any military lives at risk? This is how the Americans do it, from a bunker somewhere deep in the Nevada Desert a pilot controls a small unmanned surveillance aircraft predator thousands of miles away in the Gulf. The Nimrod can only fly for 10 hours before it has to refuel, but with the Predator that's not a problem.

WAYNE ALLARD, US Senator, Colorado: You can put these planes up for 24 hours or 48 hours and you can constantly fly them in a circle and over time... you know, there's no break in that surveillance time. When you're in the field of battle obviously it saves lives. The time you're in the air in a military situation where somebody may be shooting at you, you will save lives.

JOFRE: There's absolutely no risk of body bags coming home at the end of a mission.

ALLARD: We don't have to worry about that so much anymore. You can use a manned aerial vehicle and not put your men and women at risk who are serving you in the military.

JOFRE: The US values them so much they've bought 3,000 and Britain... well for three years RAF pilots have been flying on Predator missions with the US but it was only recently that the Ministry of Defence found the money to buy three. Yet according to our whistleblower, much of the surveillance work he and his colleagues risk their lives for in the Nimrod could be done by the Predator.

Words of serving Nimrod crew member - spoken by an actor
ANON: For most of the operations we undertake, an unmanned drone like the Predator, could do about 80% of what we do without putting a crew of 14 at risk. We knew these men and it's very hard to accept that fact.

TORPY: What we're doing now is buying three Predator... the advanced Predators, which will give us a massive increase in capability and that will be able to take some of the stress off the Nimrods in the future.

JOFRE: And reduce the risk to air crew. You don't necessarily have to be up there for all these missions.

TORPY: You're absolutely right, and that's one of the great benefits of unmanned air vehicles.

JOFRE: Fourteen experienced servicemen made the ultimate sacrifice for their country, but might they still be alive if Britain had spent the money on a modern fleet of spy planes. A crucial question that the Board of Inquiry isn't even considering.

RAYNA: Gary joined the Air Force to serve his country. He was probably one of the most patriotic people I know. He would have willingly put his life on the line for his country to do his job and that's what he did do. But if this was a technical fault... it's... he was not supposed to die as a result of a technical fault.

VINE: Shelley Jofre reporting. The MoD's official accident report is thought unlikely to appear until September or even later, a full year after the crash happened.

Next week, Britain's biggest arms deal. The investigation may have been called off but Panorama carries on digging.