Loved the movie, Scully.  It was heavily about the NSTB--which I happened to know something about.  (They put Scully through the wringer trying to prove pilot error.)  When Ken and I were at Quantico, he worked with the NSTB and the FBI on an interesting case.

A pilot and plane were lost over the Atlantic shore.  It took months to uncover all the evidence.  Seems the pilot bailed out over a predetermined spot, made it to shore, stuffed his flight suit under driftwood in a desolate place and walked out.  As I remember he made it to Baltimore.  In the meantime, his wife had collected on a huge insurance policy.  They were caught.  He was prosecuted for destruction of government property among other things. The investigation was really interesting.

I could sympathize with what Scully went through.  Almost every crash is attributed to pilot error unless positively proved otherwise.  They all--pilots in the USMC at least--make every effort to get back to base with a crippled aircraft.  Nobody wants to go through a crash review.

I remember Ken telling about getting planes back to base--in Korean combat missions--that were so damaged from ground fire that they ended up being pushed into the dump or over the side of the carrier after he landed them.  "Didn't want to explain what went wrong if I lost an airplane and survived it."

In Viet Nam he took a 50 millimeter through the cockpit.  Missed his head by a fraction of an inch and took out the back of his seat.  "I didn't know if it damaged the ejection seat or not and wasn't about to fire it and find out it didn't work."  He landed it.  He only lost one airplane, and that was nose strut failure on takeoff.  Fire burned the plane up.  But he got out.   Those are the kind of accidents that are visible to everyone and hence can't be chalked up to pilot error.  The problem is right there on the runway--a collapsed nose strut and ruptured fuel tanks.

"For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not evil, to give you an expected end." Jeremiah 29:11  I'm glad God's expected end for Ken wasn't that day.