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Published: 23 May 11:06 EDT (07:06 GMT)

Defense News

LONDON - A British coroner called May 23 for the country’s entire fleet of Nimrod spy planes to be grounded, at the end of an inquest into a 2006 crash in Afghanistan that killed 14 servicemen.

Andrew Walker said the victims in the tragedy, in which the Nimrod plane exploded in mid-air shortly after refueling, could not have known that it was not airworthy.

“The crew and passengers were not to know that this aircraft, like every other in the Nimrod fleet, was not airworthy. The aircraft was never airworthy from the first release to service in 1969,” he said.

The Royal Air Force operates 16 Nimrod MR2 aircraft out of its base at Kinloss in northeast Scotland, and the aircraft are also used at RAF base Waddington in eastern England.

The entire fleet of reconnaissance aircraft, with its distinctive “double bubble” fuselage and protruding nosecone, was temporarily grounded last year after a dent was found in a fuel pipe.

But the inquest was told that there was a “fundamental design flaw” in that fuel couplings were near a hot air pipe - leaving the risk of fuel spilling onto hot pipes and igniting, as is thought to have happened in the 2006 crash.

A ban on mid-air refueling was also ordered, which remains in place.

But Walker, who has previously criticized defense chiefs for not providing adequate equipment to troops while presiding over other military deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, said he had no option but to call for fleet to be grounded.

“It seems to me that this is a case where I would be failing in my duty if I didn’t report action to the relevant authority that would prevent future fatalities,” he said.

“I have given the matter considerable thought and I see no alternative but to report to the Secretary of State that the Nimrod fleet should not fly until the ALARP [as low as reasonably practicable] standards are met,” he added.

The Ministry of Defence is not obliged to take the coroner’s recommendation into account.

The Nimrod crash in Afghanistan, on Sept. 2, 2006, was the British military’s single biggest loss of life in one incident since the Falklands War in 1982.

The father of one of the victims said in October that the RAF was warned about the fire risks on Nimrods two years before the crash in Kandahar province.