To all: Please accept my apology for what appeared to be, but was not intended, the unsympathetic post above. In looking for information to comment (politically) in a forum elswhere the post was not in the right place and I'm sorry I upset the community.
Terrible tragedy. My condolences to family and mates.
The Nimrod that went down recently (same as the Sea of Canada 1995 accident) are DH.106 Comet conversions. Considering the ill fated history of the original Comet (metal fatigue) is it possible that the updated bird is suffering from other design flaws?
Both recent crashes are categorized as "accidents" (no missiles, air attack or pilot error). Even with all the upgrades and modern ju-ju the aircraft is still prone to loss of flight syndrome.
Just to add to Gary's point, the failure on the Comet 1 was purely the result of stress concentrations at the corners of the square windows, which up to that time were fitted to virtually all aircraft. It had nothing to do with the structure in itself. Further, as has been said, the later Comets eliminated this problem entirely. Whatever caused this tragedy, the one thing we can be sure of is that it had absolutely nothing to do with fatigue problems arising over 50 years ago
Tonks - I endorse everything you say - the only emergency I had in 2100 command hours was an electrical fire which filled the cockpit with smoke, caused a go around ( or overshoot as we called it then) and full emergency landing with the boys in silver suits in attendance. Fortunately we all came away without a scratch but I never had any confidence in that particular aeroplane after that, because the cause was never properly explained, and the same thing happened to a colleague of mine a few weeks later this time in Category III conditions leaving Heathrow