The Terms of Reference for the Nimrod Review were set out by the Secretary of State for Defence,
Des Browne, on 13 December 2007. It emerged in May 2009 that a RAF commander destroyed a number of official documents after the loss of Nimrod XV230. The Times newspaper, 31 May 2009, reported that all documents relating to the aircraft were immediately impounded but Sqn Ldr Guy Bazalgette, commander of the Nimrod detachment in the Gulf, managed to retrieve one file. Bazalgette subsequently destroyed the document but later told the coroners inquest that none of the shredded documents were relevant to the loss of XV230. However, Bazalgette admitted: "They should not have been shredded and it was my fault that they were." Also in May 2009,
Charles Haddon-Cave, QC, leading the Nimrod Review issued a number of
Salmon letters to organisations and senior RAF officers warning them they were likely to be criticised in its formal report. The so-called Salmon letters give those who are likely to be criticised by the inquiry the opportunity to respond to the criticism before the report's publication. The MoD and the Nimrod inquiry team declined to say which senior RAF officers received letters., summarised in several short statements, like: • Summary No. 9: • Summary No. 10: The report: • Accused the MoD of "deep organisational trauma" resulting from the strategic defence review of 1998. • Sacrificing safety to cut costs, resulting in a "systemic breach" of the
military covenant. • A safety review of the Nimrod MR2 carried out by the MoD, BAE Systems and
QinetiQ was deemed a "lamentable job". Haddon-Cave condemned the change of organisational culture within the MoD between 1998 and 2006, when financial targets came to distract from safety, quoting a former senior RAF officer who told the inquiry: Haddon-Cave directly criticised 10 individuals in the report – five at the MoD, three at BAE Systems and two at QinetiQ – while throughout the review BAE Systems had been a company "in denial." Haddon-Cave's report directly criticised two RAF officers: • Air Commodore George Baber – a group captain at the time, led the MoD integrated project team responsible for a safety review of the RAF's Nimrods, which took place between 2001 and 2005. Haddon-Cave accused Baber of a "fundamental failure of leadership" in drawing up the "safety case" into potential dangers in the fleet: "He failed to give the NSC (Nimrod safety case) the priority it deserved. In doing so, he failed, in truth, to make safety his first priority." • Wing Commander Michael Eagles – then head of air vehicle for the Nimrod, Wing Cdr Eagles was supposed to be in charge of managing production of the safety review. The report found that he delegated the project "wholesale" to an MoD civilian worker who was too inexperienced and not competent to manage it: "Michael Eagles failed to give adequate priority, care and personal attention to the NSC task. He failed properly to utilise the resources available to him within the Nimrod IPT to ensure the airworthiness of the Nimrod fleet." Defence Secretary
Bob Ainsworth said the "rigorous" report would make distressing reading for the relatives of those who died. ==Legal proceedings==