A trainee jet fighter pilot had only a few seconds to react when he experienced engine trouble shortly after taking off from one of Scotland's biggest Air Force bases.

But the young man, on his first solo formation flight, shut down the wrong engine, causing the multi-million pound Jaguar to plunge into the sea less than a mile from the end of the runway at RAF Lossiemouth, Morayshire.

An RAF Board of Inquiry into the accident, which occurred on 18 September 1996, published its findings yesterday.

It has concluded that the Anglo-French fighter interceptor would have been saved if the problem had been correctly diagnosed.

But the inquiry also revealed that a key engine component, manufactured by Rolls Royce, was faulty. The RAF has now asked the firm to investigate.

When the pilot realised that something was wrong he throttled back the right hand engine, which was performing normally.

The inquiry concluded that the pilot, who has not been named, probably made the wrong decision as a result of ''a combination of stress, the sense of urgency and inexperience''.

The pilot used his ejector seat, but suffered serious back injuries when he splashed into the sea in full view of locals and holiday-makers on the beach at Lossiemouth.

The incident had echoes of the Boeing 737 passenger jet which crashed beside the M1 motorway near Derby in 1989, killing 47 people.

The Air Accident Investigation Board inquiry into the M1 incident showed that the pilot and co-pilot, on a flight from East Midlands Airport to Belfast, had shut down the right hand engine in the mistaken belief that it could have been on fire, when the problem was in the left hand engine.

Better training for passenger jet pilots was one of the 27 safety recommendations put forward by the Department of Transport inquiry when it reported in 1990.

Yesterday, as the details of the Jaguar crash were made public, the RAF inquiry team made a similar safety recommendation for military jets.

It said: ''Greater emphasis should be placed on this type of emergency during simulator training, and guidance be issued to all Jaguar pilots on dealing with engine failures at the critical moment during take-off''.

The pilot, who is in his 20s, suffered compression injuries to his spine in the accident, which made it difficult to inflate his dinghy and climb inside.

Fortunately, a Sea King search and rescue helicopter was on a training mission from the base at the time, and the pilot was winched on board within minutes of the aircraft entering the waters of the Moray Firth at around noon.

Much of the aircraft was recovered from the sea bed.

The left-hand engine was examined by engineers from manufacturers Rolls Royce, who discovered a damaged pressure seal when it was dismantled in Derby. The seal had been formed using less material than specified and there was also evidence that contamination occured in the moulding process at the factory.

The RAF has now asked Rolls Royce to ''investigate the integrity of the pressure seals in the engine fuel control unit to safe-guard their quality''.

The flight lieutenant made a complete recovery and is now flying Jaguars operationally.

Jaguars began to be built in Britain and France following a government to government agreement in 1965. Production of the aircraft, which has a wingspan of 28ft, ceased around 15 years ago, when each cost around #10m.

The aircraft are due to be phased out early in the next century when the multi-million project to build Eurofighters finally goes into production after years of inter-Governmental wrangles

over cost.