A radio recording of the last moments before 14 servicemen died on board a crippled RAF Nimrod surveillance aircraft over Afghanistan was played privately to the families of the victims at the opening of their inquests yesterday.

The families heard the last words spoken by members of the crew as the pilot struggled to control the aircraft after a fuel leak led to a fire breaking out.

Wing Commander Graeme Maidment, an RAF pathologist, told the inquest at Oxford coroner's court that all 14 men died from multiple injuries, probably caused by the Nimrod's impact on the ground rather than from the mid-air explosion.

The Nimrod, call sign XV230, exploded minutes after it had completed air-to-air refuelling near the Kandahar airbase in southern Afghanistan on September 2, 2006.

Squadron Leader Guy Bazalgette, a commander of the RAF's Nimrod detachment in Afghanistan at the time, said that he had flown six missions on the aircraft and on two of these occasions smoke and fire alarms had sounded, although they had each proved to be false. He told the inquest: “On previous tours of duty fuel leaks had become an issue for me as a detachment commander.” However, no mention had been made of a fuel-leak concern over Nimrod XV230 before it exploded.

Squadron Leader Bazalgette said that the XV230 was one of only two aircraft available for surveillance missions, and that it regularly carried out air-to-air refuelling. “The aircraft was doing the majority of missions. It was also doing the majority of AAR [air-to-air refuelling],” he said.

The squadron leader told the inquest that the doomed Nimrod had flown eight missions in two weeks and he estimated that five of them had included air-to-air refuelling. He acknowledged that if the inquest found that air-to-air refuelling was a danger, “then we were increasing the risk of this happening by the amount of AAR we were doing”.

Andrew Walker, the deputy assistant coroner of Oxfordshire, said that eight areas of evidence would not be heard in open court because of their sensitive nature. They included details of the Nimrod's altitude, precise information about its mission, and specific details about the air-to-air refuelling process and equipment on board the aircraft.

Families of those who died questioned whether Flight Lieutenant David Bain, the engineering officer in charge of maintenance of the Nimrod XV230, was sufficiently experienced. He had taken responsibility for the aircraft after a two-week training course in Nimrod management. Flight Lieutenant Bain told the inquest: “Across the board I felt that I had sufficient experience.” He said that he was “vaguely aware” of an investigation into fuel leaks in Nimrods but not of the findings.

Earlier, the RAF pathologist told the inquest that the bodies of the victims had been “extremely fragmented” and that the body parts of one of the servicemen had been misidentified. Wing Commander Maidment offered his deepest apologies for the mistake.

“Whatever the error, the distress that it may have caused to members of the family cannot be quantified,” the coroner said.

The inquest continues today.