You will remember the iconic scene in Apocalypse Now, when the helicopters laden with napalm and piloted by madmen play The Ride of the Valkyries over loudspeakers. It was the moment that crystallised not just the insanity of war, but also the glorious black romance of driving a killing machine.

Since that movie, Hollywood has fed the compelling fantasy — the sense that aircrew, by virtue of their skills and their machines, operate outside the normal boundaries. More brave, more lawless, more maverick, more arrogant. Up there, brilliant young men, the best of the best, write their own rules.

So it is maybe no surprise that real life should imitate art: that when an RAF Puma helicopter was on a morale-building exercise with a cargo of young army recruits, it was interpreted as an excuse for some fun, and that the pilot should play Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire over the cockpit speakers, and that a passenger should shout “Yeeha, Jester’s dead” — a quote from another iconic flying movie, Top Gun.

For their moment of madness three of them, including the pilot, paid with their lives. Others were left badly injured. An inquest into the crash in 2007 found this week that the £20 million Puma, swooping at tree-height, was being flown beyond the pilot’s capabilities.

The tragedy was immense, not least for the parents of the pilot, Flight Lieutenant David Sale, aged 28 when he died, who must live not only with the loss of their son but also with the knowledge that he misjudged events badly.

We make a grave mistake, however, if we try to make the pilot responsible for what happened at Catterick. The real question is the extent to which his mistakes betray a systemic carelessness within the RAF.

The coroner was clear that the blame lay elsewhere. He said that there was a decline in administration, airmanship and discipline in the RAF. There had been a “lack of rigour” on the base and “defects in the systems operated by the Ministry of Defence, which may have contributed to these deaths”.

As recently as a couple of years ago, I would have been startled by this verdict. One buys into the myth. The present climate, after all, is one in which our Armed Forces can do little wrong.

The public, on the outside, hears of acts of superb flying to rescue soldiers in Afghanistan, often with less than ideal equipment; and we love the idealised image of “the right stuff”; of nerveless flying and languid, ice-cool decision-making in the best traditions of the RAF.

But now I’m not surprised. My rosy views changed since I heard the uncensored inside experiences of two young men, family friends, who joined a university RAF cadet squadron with the intention of entering the Force when they graduated.

The selection process was ferociously competitive. As would be expected for entry into such an elite band, they were grilled by senior RAF officers about their intellect, their fitness and their ability to think on their feet.

When the boys were accepted, they were thrilled. They looked forward to the trips, the flying tuition and the opportunities. The reality, when they encountered it, wasn’t just a disappointment — it was a profound shock.

The culture, they were astonished to discover, centred around heavy drinking. Students met weekly at the local RAF base, were given a desultory lecture and then had to participate in a subsidised drinking session for the rest of the evening.

At first it was fun, then the boys wearied of it. But they soon learnt that the way to get on any of the trips was to cosy up to the inner circle of Hooray Henries who ran the student squadron. Which meant getting as drunk as they did. Everyone not in the in-crowd was left on the margins.

The boys recounted the glum faces of those, especially the girls, who sat on the periphery. There seemed to be very little supervision or organisation of the students by RAF officers. None of the promised trips came off.

The boys persevered, hoping that things would improve. But it remained shambolic. After a year and a half of Thursday nights spent gibbering with cheap drink in the company of people they neither liked nor respected, they quit, bored and disillusioned. Despite all the money spent on them and on their uniforms, nobody sought their views on why they left, or conducted an exit interview.

Now I absolutely appreciate that this was a one tiddly little student squadron, not a band of professional fighter pilots. But do not overlook how symptomatic it is.

The attitudes and laxity that these young men encountered, within the auspices of the RAF, speak loudly of a pervasive culture of indiscipline, cliquishness and lack of supervision.

As tragic events have shown, the RAF’s young men are vulnerable to that heady image of glorious craziness, of death-defying valour. For the sake of those brave enough to wish to join, the service needs to modernise its attitudes and, if not to slay the Hollywood dragon, at least to keep it in its cage.

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