I first read of this terrible accident in a book titled 'Air Disasters-Dialog from the Black Box', by Stanley Stewart,but it is only after visiting this web site that I have begun to fully  realize the implication of certain events, including the change in the final way point and the confusion this caused the the flight crew.
There is one aspect that continues to puzzle me about Stanley Stewart's description of events leading up to the crash, and this concerns the apparent difficulty with radio communications with 'Mac Center' by flight 901. It appears from the book that the heading of flight 901 towards Mt. Erebus meant that communications with 'Mac Center' on VHF were being blocked by high ground ( Mt. Erebus), so that communications were only possible on HF radio. Successful VHF contact and transponder 'squawk' were only briefly achieved in the descent to the racetrack circuit which allowed line of sight to 'Mac Center'.

Were these comms. difficulties a significant factor in this accident?

Just seen this excellent post from a couple of years ago. Lots to comment on here

oranmore wrote If you read the transcript, you'll see that the captain was offered a radar-assisted descent, which he gladly accepted. For the next ten minutes, the crew attempted to contact the Tower on VHF, without success. Radio communications in Antartica were notoriously unreliable, so the crew probably thought that the VHF radio was having an off day. Without VHF contact with the Tower, there could be no radar-assisted descent, so the captain should have baled out. Instead, he embarked on that racetrack circuit descent, without radar confirmation of his position (on the basis that he was visual, when he knew he wasn't).  As regards the changed waypoint, that was obviously one of the causes of the accident - but so to was the captain's failure to comply with the basic rules of airmanship. If he had followed his own plan and not descended until his position had been confirmed by radar, the accident would not have occurred. Another point that is often overlooked is that the internal navigation system was not regarded as sufficient confirmation of position for a landing or for a descent below the height of a known hazard. The captain knew that, which is why he pretended to be visual.

Firstly, I think the phrase "pretended to be visual" is doing Collins something of a disservice. It implies he deliberately made a farce of his own VFR descent. If you think about Collins's mindset - he is offered a radar guided descent and responds "crikey, that's what we want to hear". So he's excited, the flight is going to work after all. This feeling of relief would have been replaced, over the next ten minutes, with intense frustration due to the failure to raise VHF comms. Then, emotionally back again - he sees a break in the cloud and decides, without really stopping to think, to go for it. Yay!! We're still a go! At that moment he failed to discuss his plan with his colleagues, failed to recognise he wasn't going to be truly VFR, and forgot his own warning about it being hard to tell the difference between cloud and ice. He'd developed a case of "get-there-itis". An understandable, and often repeated human failing, but a failing nonetheless.

I suspect, as the descent progressed, Collins himself became increasingly unhappy with what he was doing. Certainly Brooks was, with his comment "I don't like this". Mahon tries to write off this comment as signifying unease only at the very instant the comment was uttered; but I believe this to be fanciful in the extreme.

The significance of the overlooked point of the internal navigation system as not being regarded sufficient confirmation of position for a landing or for a descent below the height of a known hazard, is very hard to convey to laymen. Mahon himself dismissed it as some sort of feeble, desperate clutching at straws by those that would seek to cast blame upon the crew; when actually nothing could be further from the truth.

blah blah blah

Did Captain Collins ever receive radar confirmation of his position?

Answer: No

Your turn.

@Gasman:

With respect:

1. I'm keeping things as concise as I can, bearing in mind that there are quite a few things to consider.
2. I am on topic - and to be fair, it's a little troublesome to keep track of where one is when the person to whom you're responding keeps opening up new threads.
3. I have apologised for the length of my posts, however when looking beyond the artificial limits imposed by ANZ and Chippindale's arguments, it's a matter of necessity to consider the whole thing at length.  The primary argument made (and which yourself and oranmore seem to support) consists of "These were the rules, here's where they broke them - that's why it was their fault".  The issue as I see it is that there's a lot of evidence to suggest that some of those rules may not in fact have been in force until after the fact, and that the regs which did exist were unfit for purpose.