Royal Navy pilot, 31, was killed in helicopter crash after his commander accidentally turned the engines off when flying over the English Channel, inquiry finds
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By SEAN RAYMENT
Published: | Updated:
A Royal Navy pilot was killed in a catastrophic helicopter crash after his commander mistakenly switched off two engines as they flew over the English Channel, an inquiry has found.
Lieutenant Rhodri Leyshon, 31, died after the Merlin Mk4 plunged into the English Channel during a night training exercise with the carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth off the Dorset coast on September 4, 2024.
The trouble started at 8.46pm when a rubber part inside one of the Merlin's three engines split, sending it surging out of control.
Warnings flashed up without saying which engine was at fault, and the crew wrongly concluded that the other two had failed.
The commander then switched off those two healthy engines without the confirmation from a second crew member that procedures require for critical switches, investigators found.
The faulty engine, now running alone, revved so fast that its safety system shut it down, leaving the aircraft with no power at all.
The helicopter plummeted into the sea, snapping off the tail and flipping the fuselage upside down, and although the commander and aircrewman escaped, Lt Leyshon, who was seriously injured, could not get out.
A senior officer on the carrier ordered a second Merlin to prepare for a rescue without realising it had no winch, leaving it unable to do anything but hover over the wreckage while the survivors were stranded in the water.
The ship's main rescue boat could not be launched because of a sensor fault on its crane, so a second boat was used and did not set off until about 9.02pm.
Lieutenant Rhodri Leyshon, 31, died after the Merlin Mk4 plunged into the English Channel during a night training exercise with the carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth off the Dorset coast
The recovered tail section of the Merlin Mk4 helicopter is brought into Portland Port
The two survivors were pulled from the water by that boat, but Lt Leyshon was not found for almost two hours and was pronounced dead in hospital.
'I know that he would have done everything within his power to get the helicopter back,' Lt Leyshon's mother Mary Scourfield said.
'It is therefore heartbreaking to see that he was put into this situation,' she added.
The crew had initially planned to land on the carrier while still moving forward, a manoeuvre the inquiry concluded would 'almost certainly' have succeeded.
Investigators traced the failure to a procedure introduced by engine maker Safran in 2020 that weakened the rubber part, and 10 of 117 similar parts examined afterwards showed damage that could cause a split.
Neither pilot was fully prepared for deck landings, and the commander had flown just once in the previous 40 days, the report said.
Investigators concluded that a collective 'skill fade' had very likely undermined the crew's ability to cope, and that they worked in 'relative isolation' rather than challenging each other's diagnosis.
The impact was survivable, the report said, but the seat designed to absorb the force of a crash had been set for a weight below Lt Leyshon's own.
The inquiry made 44 recommendations covering engine maintenance, cockpit warnings, pilot training, rescue equipment and aircraft survivability.
'We believe that he was let down by people and systems beyond his control,' Lt Leyshon's father, Tim Leyshon, said.
Colonel Mark Johnson, commanding officer of the Commando Helicopter Force, described him as a 'consummate professional and a shining light with a bright future'.
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