Osprey's Design Didn't Cause Crash
The Marine Corps says the fatal December crash of a V-22 Osprey was not caused by the aircraft's hybrid tilt-rotor design and hopes the finding could lead to the revival of the troubled aircraft program, The New York Times reported in Tuesday's editions.
The finding, discussed by a commandant of the corps on Monday, is part of a crash report that the corps expects to send to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as early as this week.
The costly V-22 program has been plagued by two fatal accidents and accusations of doctored maintenance reports in the last year alone. The latest investigation blames hydraulic and computer failures.
"The thing I would say now is it doesn't appear to be anything that has to do with tilt-rotor physics," the commandant, Gen. James Jones, said of the Dec. 11 crash which killed four marines.
Jones said there is a belief that an aircraft that takes off like a helicopter and flies like a plane "can't do either very well" but that "so far the physics of the tilt rotor doesn't lend itself to that type of criticism."
Some aircraft experts have questioned the inherent safety of the Osprey, whose wings have rotors that can tilt upward like a helicopter or forward like a plane.
Questions of the craft's aerodynamic stability are being reviewed by an expert panel appointed last year by former Secretary of Defense William Cohen.
Jones said he was optimistic that the Marines' final crash report would include assurances from the Defense Department's inspector general that the December crash, as well as a fatal crash last April, were not a result of falsified maintenance records at the Osprey squadron's headquarters in North Carolina. The April crash, which killed 19 marines, is the subject of a separate inquiry.
The Osprey, built by the Boeing Co.'s helicopter division and Textron Inc.'s Bell Helicopter unit, has been one of the Pentagon's most controversial programs. The experimental aircraft will have a price tag topping $30 billion should full production proceed.
In addition to the two crashes last year, a prototype version crashed in June 1991 while undergoing its first flight in Delaware, and in July 1992 another prototype Osprey crashed near Quantico, Va., killing seven people.
The December crash led the Marine Corps to ground all Ospreys — the third time the controversial aircraft was grounded since the April crash. The aircraft remain grounded.
In January, CBS News' 60 Minutes reported that the commander of the Osprey squadron had told his men to falsify reports of the airplane's readiness for service. That commander resigned.
Subsequently, 60 Minutes obtained an e-mail message from one top Marine commander to another that appeared to suggest an effort at high levels of command to downplay some Osprey maintenance information.
The four killed in the December crash were identified by Marine Corps headquarters as: Lt. Col. Keith M. Sweaney, 42, of Richmond, Va.; Maj. Michael L. Murphy, 38, of Blauvelt, N.Y.; Staff Sgt. Avely W. Runnels, 25, of Morven, Ga.; and Sgt. Jason A. Buyck, 24, of Sodus, N.Y.