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Government culpability in risking servicemen’s lives will be thrust to centre stage this week by the inquiry into the causes of the RAF Nimrod explosion over Afghanistan that killed all 14 on board.

There is intense government concern over the RAF board of inquiry report, which is likely to raise new doubts over Gordon Brown’s support for the armed services.

The aircraft, which dates from the 1960s, was flying only because its replacement was delayed until 2010 to save money and a number of warnings about the risks were ignored.

The aircraft had a history of fuel leaks in the bomb bay, caused by pressure spikes in the air-to-air refuelling system.

The inquiry believes that the catastrophic explosion, west of Kandahar, was brought about by fuel leaking into the bomb bay, where it was ignited by hot air from a fractured pipe. That led the No 7 fuel tank at the base of the starboard wing to explode.

Senior RAF officers are also implicated, because the hot air pipe was known to be a danger and could have been put out of action at no cost.

Nimrod XV230 was gathering intelligence in support of a Nato operation against the Taleban in southern Afghanistan on September 2 last year. The pilot reported a fire in the bomb bay and sent out a "pan, pan, pan" signal, the distress call one step below Mayday, before trying to land at Kandahar. He took the aircraft down 20,000ft in 90 seconds, but at 3,000ft the starboard wing exploded, followed by the rest of the aircraft.

"The really sad thing is that, from the moment the fire started, the crew were doomed," said Nigel Gilbert, a former RAF pilot. "They had no chance of making it to Kandahar.

"The lack of safety equipment is a direct result of a culture of poor risk management that is endemic among senior officers and MoD officials and is largely driven by lack of funding."

The MoD and senior RAF officers ignored repeated warnings of fuel leaks and fires on board the aircraft.

In August 2004 BAE Systems, the manufacturer, was asked to check to see if it would be safe to delay its replacement. BAE’s report warned that there had been 880 fires or "smoke-related incidents" on Nimrods in the past 22 years and that hot air pipes in the bomb bay were too close to the key elements of the fuel system. If a fire broke out in the bomb bay, there was no way of extinguishing it.

The report urged the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to fit a fire suppression system in the bomb bay, but the warning was ignored.

Jimmy Jones, a former RAF engineering officer who worked on the Nimrod trials, said: "If the MoD had acted on BAE Systems’ recommendations, those 14 crew members would still be alive today."

In November 2004 a hot air pipe in the bomb bay of a Nimrod fractured as the craft came in to land at RAF Kinloss, Morayshire, blasting hot air onto the No 7 tank.

An inquiry into that incident found the hot air would have been at least 50C above the spontaneous ignition point of the Nimrod’s Avtur fuel, which had begun to boil in the tank.

Disaster was averted only because the aircraft was on its way back to base. In his report on the incident, the station commander at Kinloss warned of more "unexpected failures" due to the aircraft’s age.

XV230 was one of a small number of Nimrods used to feed crucial live video of the battlefield direct to commanders in Afghanistan.

Nimrod’s air-to-air refuelling system was fitted as a quick fix in the 1982 Falklands conflict.

In March 2006 a report by QinetiQ, the defence consultants, blamed the Nimrod’s age and the "intense" way in which the aircraft were flown for what it described as a "critical" structural problem. The warning was ignored – with fatal results.

Warning signs

- August 2004 BAE Systems warns of bomb bay fires

- November 2004 Burst pipe pours hot air on fuel tank

- March 2006 QinetiQ reports fuel pipe going unfixed, situation "critical"

- September 2006 XV230 explodes over Afghanistan killing 14

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