Britain’s armed forces have for years been dogged by stories of how troops operating in dangerous places are seriously under-resourced, lacking the equipment and training they need. But few such tales in recent times have been as gut-wrenching as the one which made the headlines this week, centring on the crash of an RAF Nimrod surveillance aircraft in Afghanistan three years ago.

On September 2 2006, the Nimrod, a 37-year-old plane, burst into flames with the loss of all 14 people on board. It was the biggest loss of UK personnel in a single incident since the 1982 Falklands conflict. Yet this was not an incident triggered by confrontation with the enemy. Instead, an inquiry published this week by Charles Haddon-Cave QC, a barrister, judged that the crash was entirely due to a failure by Ministry of Defence officials and defence industry experts to conduct prior safety checks on the plane.