A NIMROD spy plane that blew up over Afghanistan, killing all 14 men on board, had been rushed to the front line despite commanders knowing it had numerous fuel leaks. Newly obtained documents show that repairs to pipelines were deferred because it was one of the few aircraft available with a key surveillance capability.

A report by the RAF’s board of inquiry into the incident in September last year is understood to blame leaking fuel for the explosion. Information on the poor state of the Nimrod fleet, some of which date back to the 1970s, has trickled out since the crash, angering relatives of the victims.

The need to fight two wars has coincided with a crunch in RAF funding which has led to cutbacks and an aircraft that is decades old remaining in the air after its intended retirement.

“Operational tempo is driving everything and safety is very much lower in the order of priority,” said one recently retired pilot.

“The modern RAF lacks the money, aircraft and manpower to do the job and is forced to operate planes way past their sell-by date.”

E-mails and evidence obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that the lost Nimrod, known by its tail number XV230, had been springing fuel leaks for more than a year before it exploded in mid-air.

In February 2006, a company specialising in fuel repairs on civil airliners had been called in to fix the military jet, based at RAF Kinloss in Morayshire. But no sooner had it resumed flying than the leaks returned.

In the six months before the explosion there were more than 50 fuel leaks on Nimrods, at least 12 of them on XV230. In June and July it was pushed through a new maintenance scheme designed to save money, which cured just five of the 12 leaks.

However, pressure to deploy the aircraft, one of only six capable of sending real-time video to commanders, was so intense that it was immediately sent out to Oman, where Nimrods flying over Afghanistan are based. The need to fix the seven remaining leaks was put off until January 2007, by which time the aircraft would have finished its tour.

Jimmy Jones, a former RAF engineer who worked on the original Nimrod trials in the 1960s, said there had been time for only one “shakedown” flight to check for faults before the plane was deployed.

“They said, ‘We need this aircraft out there’, pushed it through and deferred those leaks until after XV230’s tour was over,” said Jones. “Here’s an aircraft staggering out of servicing and they pushed it out straight away. They were desperate to get this aircraft flying and they just pushed it out with those defects.”

Over the next three weeks the aircraft carried out 15 sorties over Afghanistan, a gruelling schedule. The 16th and final sortie took place on September 2, 2006. Shortly before 11am, as the plane circled an operation against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan, the bomb bay fire warning light lit up red on the control panel. The Nimrod had just refuelled, a process known to worsen the leaks.

Lieutenant Allan Squires, 39, the pilot, saw the problem and turned towards Kandahar airbase, 20 miles to the east. “Pan, pan, pan,” he said into his radio, using the emergency call a level below “mayday” and explaining they had a fire in the bomb bay.

Squires was one of the RAF’s most experienced pilots. “If anyone could have got it onto the ground safely then he could,” said a colleague.

He dropped 20,000ft in just 90 seconds, upgrading his emergency call to mayday as smoke spread through the fuselage. But at 3,000ft, within sight of Kandahar’s control tower, the starboard wing exploded, followed by the rest of the aircraft.

The debris came down close to the village of Chil Kor, 12 miles west of Kandahar, in an area crawling with Taliban. The bodies were recovered by troops from the RAF Regiment sent out from the base, but they had little time to collect wreckage as evidence for the inquiry.

The Nimrod MR2, affectionately nicknamed the Mighty Hunter by its crews, was built at the height of the cold war for maritime surveillance, tracking Soviet submarines as they passed Britain’s shores.

Based on the Comet, the world’s first jet airliner which was introduced in 1949, the Nimrod was due to have retired in 1995. But cash shortages have delayed introduction of the new Nimrod MRA4 until 2010.

The war on terror has meant that the old aircraft are in high demand. Before the 2003 Iraq war, XV230 was one of only half a dozen Nimrods fitted with a gyroscopic video camera allowing it to take battlefield footage.

The fact that this footage could be relayed instantly to ground commanders meant there was immense pressure to keep these craft in the air - so much so that only two days after the explosion and despite the history of fuel leaks, another Nimrod was back flying. Two days later, they resumed air-to-air refuelling.

Ten days after the explosion, the bodies of the 14 crew were repatriated to RAF Kinloss. But already the questions had begun as to whether the risk to the crews was too great - not from the Taliban but from their own aircraft - and whether the fuel leaks and other problems should have led senior officers to be more cautious in its use.

An e-mail from one RAF officer showed no doubt in his mind. “We’ve not heard a dicky bird then suddenly the air component commander in the Gulf wants us airborne and tanker-capable again,” he said in an e-mail to a former colleague.

“So, we had a jet air-to-air refuelling over Kandahar four days after the accident!! Unbelievable. I can’t see how that could ever possibly be considered to be good risk management.”

He was not alone in his concerns. As far back as early 2003, when the plane was carrying out a heavy workload over Iraq, the RAF asked BAE Systems, the manufacturer, whether it would be safe to fly until its replacement came into service in 2010.

BAE issued its conclusions in August 2004, warning that hot air pipes in the bomb bay were too close to the fuel systems and recommending the Ministry of Defence (MoD) fit a fire suppression system.

The MoD rejected the proposal on the basis that it was unlikely to be effective. Three months later, ground crew at RAF Kinloss, checking an aircraft after a training flight, discovered that a hot air pipe in the bomb bay had burst, spraying superheated air onto the fuel tank at the base of the starboard wing.

A series of e-mails reveal efforts to try to stop the fuel leaks as staff scrabbled around various budgets to find funding. They begin in December 2005 and show that XV230 was one of two aircraft badly affected by leaks and that there was a danger that no aircraft with the vital capability could be sent to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Despite new rules brought in after the explosion, one Nimrod suffered a leak in mid-air refuelling with hundreds of gallons of fuel splashing along the fuselage. A month later, another Nimrod lost nearly 1,000 gallons of fuel as a result of a leak during mid-air refuelling.

Much of the information that has come out has emerged only because of the determination of Graham Knight to find out why his son Ben, one of XV230’s crew, had died. “His mum wants to know why he died,” Knight said. “An RAF officer came round to discuss the funeral arrangements. He said, ‘We’ll pay for this, we’ll pay for that’.

“And Trish said, ‘What do you want me to say? The RAF killed him, of course they should pay. He was in an RAF plane, the RAF is responsible’.”

The MoD said: “RAF Nimrod aircraft are designed and certified to strict airworthiness and safety standards. If we didn’t have confidence in the aircraft, we would not continue to fly them.”

Read more on the Nimrod at www.timesonline.co.uk/micksmith

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