Portal:Scotland/Selected article/Week 18, 2012

The 1994 Scotland RAF Chinook crash occurred on 2 June 1994 at about 18:00 hours when a Royal Air Force (RAF) Chinook helicopter (serial number ZD576, callsign F4J40) crashed on the Mull of Kintyre, Scotland, killing all twenty-five passengers and four crew on board. Among the passengers were almost all the United Kingdom's senior Northern Ireland intelligence experts. It was the RAF's worst peacetime disaster.

Earlier on 2 June 1994 the helicopter and crew had carried out a trooping flight, as it was unsafe for British troops to move around in Northern Ireland using surface transport at the time. The mission was safely accomplished and they returned to Aldergrove at 15:20. They took off for Inverness at 17:42. Weather en route was forecast to be clear except in the Mull of Kintyre area. The crew made contact with Scottish military ATC at 17:55. Around 18:00, Chinook ZD576 flew into a hillside in dense fog. The helicopter had been carrying 25 British intelligence experts from MI5, the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the British Army, from RAF Aldergrove (outside Belfast, Northern Ireland) to attend a conference at Fort George (near Inverness) in Scotland. At the time of the accident Air Chief Marshal Sir William Wratten called it "the largest peacetime tragedy the RAF had suffered".