Operation TELIC Loss Remembered

​On Saturday 6 May 2006 Lynx AH Mk 7 Serial No. XZ614 of 847 Naval Air Squadron Detachment assigned to the Joint Helicopter Force (Iraq), was conducting a local area reconnaissance of Helicopter Landing Sites overhead Basra city. After  transiting some two kilometres from the airfield at medium level, the aircraft came down 500 metres south of the Old State Building, crashing onto the rooftop of a residential building in the city centre. The three crew and two Royal Air Force passengers in the aircraft were fatally injured. The Board of Inquiry concluded that the main cause of the crash was a hostile Surface-to-Air Missile attack. 
To mark the twentieth anniversary of the operational incident, Acts of Remembrance were carried out at Royal Naval Air Station Yeovilton and the National Memorial Arboretum, Staffordshire. Families, friends and former colleagues gathered at the venues to commemorate Lieutenant Commander Darren Chapman, Captain David Dobson, Marine Paul Collins, as well as Wing Commander John Coxen and Flight Lieutenant Sarah-Jayne Mulvihill. 
Both services were led by Reverend James Bell-Winfrow, the current Commando Helicopter Force Chaplain.