Three days earlier, at about 8.30 a.m. on the very morning after the accident, three mountaineer staff members at Scott Base had managed to get there in order to search for survivors.  And Mr Woodford, who was one of them, has described the scene in a letter received by the Royal Commissioner during the public hearings.  The letter, which is amplified in a affidavit put before this Court, is set out later in this judgment.  Mr Woodford explained that when he got to the scene he found a black flight bag with Captain Collins’ name printed on it.  It was lying open on the snow and it was empty.  Already material in the form of books and papers that had not been destroyed when the aircraft disintegrated on impact had been blown by winds over the ice-slope or into crevasses or covered by drifting snow.  He pointed out that although the cockpit voice recorder had been located quite quickly when he was back at the crash site with the party from New Zealand on 2nd December the “black box” could not be found until later that evening after it had been decided to begin digging systematically for it.  It was found buried under snow at a depth, he said, of 20 to 30 cms.

But although the bag was empty it was suggested at the hearing that while at McMurdo Captain Gemmell might have “collected a quantity of documents from the crash site and brought them back to Auckland”; that only three of the flight documents carried on the aircraft had been produced to the Royal Commission; that it was “curious” to find that each favoured the case “which the airline was now attempting to advance”; and all this against counsel’s theory that before Captain Gemmell had left Auckland on 29th November he was aware of possible problems associated with the amendment to the destination point co-ordinates.  Captain Gemmell flatly denied having that knowledge while in the Antarctic; and he rejected totally any suggestion that he had recovered anything from the site which had not been passed across in terms of Mr Chippindale’s instructions.  In that regard he answered two propositions put to him by the Commissioner (at page 1834) in the following way: 

“Well the suggestion may be made to me in due course that because of the discovery that Capt Collins did not know of the alteration in the nav track consequently someone in the co. would have been instructed to locate whatever documents there were on the crash site and elsewhere that might throw light on that question.  You say that no such instruction was given to you....  Certainly not.

     But it would have been a reasonable instruction would it not....  No
     it would not have.”

Intimidation of a Witness