Enquiries
A British-Soviet commission of enquiry was set up on 10 April. The Soviet representative, Major-General Alexandrov, refused to hear the evidence of German or American witnesses, claiming that only British and Soviet evidence was relevant and in any case Germans were unreliable. On 13 April the British ended proceedings by saying they were unable to proceed on this basis.
Thereupon a British court of enquiry was convened by General Robertson and held in Berlin on 14–16 April. This found that the crash was accidental, that the fault in the crash was entirely that of the Soviet pilot, and that Captain John Ralph and First Officer Norman Merrington DFC of BEA were not in the slightest to blame for the crash. However, the Soviets announced that the fault was entirely that of the British aircraft, which emerged from low cloud and crashed into the fighter. The British enquiry heard that the Viking was flying at 1,500 feet, well below the cloud base at 3,000 feet.
Read more about this topic: 1948 Gatow Air Disaster
Famous quotes containing the word enquiries:
“Every disastrous accident alarms us, and sets us on enquiries concerning the principles whence it arose: Apprehensions spring up with regard to futurity: And the mind, sunk into diffidence, terror, and melancholy, has recourse to every method of appeasing those secret intelligent powers, on whom our fortune is supposed entirely to depend.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)