Hercules crash latest: Harold Wilson to blame
There’s been much in the news about the British Hercules transport plane shot down in Iraq last year with the loss of ten servicemen. It’s been said this week that if the plane’s fuel tanks had been fitted with explosive-suppressant foam, the men might have survived.
Here’s Defence Secretary John Reid on Channel 4 News, last night on why the foam was fitted on American and Australian Hercules and not on British ones:
The Australian and American experience… was different. It was derived largely from Vietnam and their experience was of the efficacy of small arms against their operations. That was not the experience of the RAF.
See? If Harold Wilson had only caved to the requests of the Johnson Administration and sent British forces to Vietnam, those ten servicemen might still be alive.
Reid also said:
The whole history of the RAF has illustrated that the least threat to them was from small arms fire and the biggest threat was from surface to air missiles… in the 30-odd years the Hercules has been flying for the RAF, no such attack had been successful before.
It’s impeccable logic. Just because a Hercules had never been brought down by small arms fire before there was no need to shell out a mere £50,000 per plane on speculative future attacks.
Look out for Reid in the papers in the next day or so saying the the Prime Minister and his wife should give up their bullet-proof and bomb-proof cars and be given simple umbrellas. “The whole history of New Labour,” he will say, “has illustrated that the least threat to them is from bullets and bombs and the biggest threat is from being pelted with eggs and rotting vegetables.”
Posted on May 4th, 2006 at 9:25 am
The amusing thing is that Hoon went to Afghanistan in one of the foamless and, for that matter, DAS-less Herks. They only told him after they got there…
The Hercules was brought down when at least 6 shoulder fired anti tank missiles were fired at it, hardly small arms.
It’s presence which was to do with some dodgy biz had been leaked and they were ambushed.
Interestingly Reid was impossible to pin down
1. When the re fit to tanks commenced
2. When it will be finished
but revealingly he had, “on receiving the report said it should be done” … “although uou and I Krishna of course don’t understand these things”…. very very very clever men in the RAF etc.,
One has to say for a guy on double cold turkey on booze and fags (with a son married to the daughter of Glasgaes finest and most notorious drug dealer)he has been transmogrified. Old Rotweiller John has disapperaed .. I wonder what he is on ? Ritalin ?
I also listened to the interview and marvelled at the world of Reid-logic.
If the US and Australia learnt that small arms was dangerous to low-flying aircraft in Vietnam, how come this wasn’t also noticed by the UK, their closest allies. Sadly the interviewer didn’t seize on this particularly pathetic aspect of Reid’s defence.
If I say so myself, you might want to read this, this, and this.
/whore
Ha. We really are the military equivalent of the ditzy blonde in the horror movie who offers to go out to the shed for the axe dressed only in a cropped t-shirt and hotpants while wolves howl outside.