[Auth. note: AMST-16 has necessary background.]
As of November 2023, 16 V-22 Ospreys have been damaged beyond repair in accidents that have killed a total of 62 people. Four of the crashes occurred during developmental flight tests; these killed a total of 30 people from 1991 to 2000. Since the V-22 became operational in 2007, 12 crashes and several other accidents and incidents have killed a total of 32 people.
I’m not certain that this (or any) Wikipedia article is 100% correct on V-22 accidents, but for my purposes it’s close enough that you can get a sense of the goings-on with this airframe. My own story with the V-22, however, really runs from the 90s through the early aughts (‘92-01). I mentioned before that a college ROTC friend of mine was standing in formation and watched the 1992 Osprey fatal mishap over the Potomac, so I already had an eyewitness account of the Osprey’s early troubles. Then there was my 1993 rebuffed question to DCS Air about how the Osprey would fit into the Marine Corps’ entire aviation suite, viz. how the hell are we going to escort these planes-cum-helicopter things into hot LZs?
But in mid-1995, my “big brother” in the Marine Corps – college friend and ice hockey teammate, the guy who walked me around our squadron at Flight School, who was at 29 Palms when I crashed, who lived down the street from us in base housing, etc… Jeff “Stinky” Prowse told me that he had put in a package to be one of the first 46 pilots to transition to the Osprey. Yes, the very same guy I mentioned in one of these missives for his advice to me: “Never select a brand new aircraft, or you’ll be one of the guys working out the bugs whether you want to or not.” But his enthusiasm for the promise of the technology was genuine and palpable, which is really just another another example of how good the Marine Corps is at propaganda – even against those who know better. I made the requisite objection, then supported my brother. And prayed alone.
It’s a nice cockpit, I’ll give it that.
After he’d gone through the syllabus and become ensconced in the new VMMT-204 spaces, he took me for a simulator ride in the Osprey simulator. So, yes, I actually have flown in one – at least the simulation of one. Of course CH-46 guys loved the Osprey – it had a glass cockpit like a commercial airliner, complete integrated avionics suite, state-of-the-art navigation, you name it. Phrog Bubbas were helicopter pilots who had been flying a 1950s airframe, coaxing that pig into the air on willpower and misdirection, folding and refolding their maps on their kneeboards, and using their non-directional beacon and radio for instrument approaches in their old syllabus. Of course they were thrilled to be flying the new shiny thing; they’d been piloting an Edsel for the last several decades. The V-22 transition also brought them back to their fixed-wing roots in naval aviation, so it wasn’t that hard a transition. The “Blottle” – combination throttle and collective? It wasn’t awful, but something about all of it made me think (after one trip in the sim) that this was not going to work out well.
Of course, I departed in 1996 for law school, then came the Bar exam, Naval Justice School, and finally swearing in as an attorney, then the fam and I get orders to Okinawa, Japan. My first assignment as a judge advocate is as a criminal defense attorney. After two summers interning as a prosecutor, including in the Aviano Cable Car mishap trial, I have to admit that it is a blow – a deep, philosophical dread fills me. How will I defend some guilty bastard?? At the time, I am a faithful “Law and Order” viewer and I am certain that I am destined to be the Good Guy, riding in on a White Horse to Dispense Justice and Shoot the Bad Guy in the Face, and at Least See Him Off to the Pokey.
My tour winds up being cut short to one-year because one of our daughters has some pediatric GI problems; nothing that’s terribly serious, but military medical on Okinawa doesn’t have a pediatric GI doc… Conveniently, by then I have also pissed off just about everyone on the island of Okinawa because I have become a true convert to being a defense attorney and I’m wreaking havoc in court on commands. It’s not that I was great at it; it’s that I fought like hell for every single client and case because I understood that to be the obligation. I came to realize that what the Marine Corps really wanted was merely “adequate” defense before the conviction; enough for a defense attorney to meet the Supreme Court’s Strickland standard for effective assistance to uphold the conviction on appeal. I actually wanted to win.
At one point, in the middle of a court-martial, the night before jury selection, I get an intermediate appellate stay in my anthrax vaccine refuser cases, halting the shots on the island. I have also defended a Marine charged with raping an Okinawa national in base housing and a Marine light-heavyweight boxer who punched an Okinawa woman in the face out in town… worst of all, I have done it with excessive zeal.1
All of which conspires to put us back stateside in Quantico, Virginia, in 2000, where every Marine Officer’s career begins, but now I’m not an officer can-o’-dirt, or a new shavetail 2nd Lieutenant, I’m a senior captain and the Base’s lead prosecutor. I work for the Military Justice Officer, who oversees all Mil-Jus matters for the base, but I’m the guy who takes cases to court.
Meanwhile…
They Start Dropping Like Harriers
Of course I’ve been keeping my eyes on the sky. Part of my remit on Okinawa is that I handle cases from 3d Marine Aircraft Wing and my office on Camp Foster is close enough for me to catch glimpses of aircraft in the pattern above the surrounding hills. Once in a blue moon, I run into an old colleague from my flying days.
On April 8, 2000, four MV-22 Ospreys were conducting a nighttime training exercise that we call “NEO” – no, not because of Keanu Reeves in “The Matrix” – it’s an acronym for “Non-combatant Evacuation Operation”. It’s to simulate an embassy evacuation or some type of similar event. Two Ospreys were actually to fly the mission with 2 additional Osprey following at a short distance to observe the mission.
As they approached the landing site, the pilots of the mishap V-22 realized they were 2,000 feet above the required altitude and reduced power. As Lt. Colonel Brow maneuvered the aircraft to land, the Osprey entered an erratic roll, turning on its back and slamming into the ground nose first. All 19 Marines aboard the aircraft were killed. The second V-22 also made a hard landing but suffered no fatalities.
In sum, they broke one of the cardinal rules of helicopter flying: they descended faster than 800 ft/mn at less than 40 knots, entering something (else) unique (ly dangerous) to helicopter flight, known as vortex ring state. In essence, if you descend too shallow and too quickly, you settle into your own “dirty” air that the rotors have already “chopped up” and you instantly lose lift, dropping like a greased safe. In a regular helicopter, the only chance to recover or “get out” of it is to stuff the nose and fly forward of the shitty, “lift-less” air. In a V-22, however, because the rotors are side-by-side when it turns to “helo-mode” and therefore have (mostly) two different columns of air, well… the Osprey snap-rolled and went in upside-down on its nose.
I called Jeff at some point to talk. Of course he knew people involved. It turns out that I knew at least one of the pilots in one of the other 3 Ospreys there that night, as well. At the time, Jeff was serving as the OIC22 of the squadron’s Flight Line shop. In a Marine aviation helo squadron, the Flight Line shop is the largest because it contains most of the “wrenchturners” – maintainers, mechs, they have a bunch of nicknames – but those are the Marines who work on, and fix, those aircraft.
Six months later in October 2000 I was back stateside in Quantico. The JAGMAN investigation had came out on July 27, 2000, and it did not look good for the Osprey. And then it got worse.
[The DoD] Director of Operational Test and Evaluation wrote a report seven months after the crash stating the Osprey was not “operationally suitable, primarily because of reliability, maintainability, availability, human factors and interoperability issues”, and implored more research to be conducted into the Osprey’s susceptibility to vortex ring state.[13] Nevertheless, a panel, convened by Secretary of Defense William Cohen to review the V-22 program, recommended its continuance despite many issues with safety and reliability. As a result, the procurement budget was decreased, but the research and development budget was increased. Eight months later, another MV-22 Osprey, conducting training near Jacksonville, North Carolina, crashed, killing 4 Marines.
Jeff was the Casualty Assistance Officer (CACO) for the crash that killed the 4 Marines. i.e. The person who does the death notification to the family. Those were his squadronmates, and two of his Marines, in the back of that aircraft. I had left aviation and gone on with my relatively safe and comfortable life behind a desk and now the mishaps were happening to others.
It’s Never the Crime; it’s the Cover-Up
Jeff called me before the 60 Minutes piece about the CO of VMMT-204, LtCol Fred Leberman aired in January of 2001. A crew chief had recorded an all hands meeting in which the CO told folks to fudge maintenance records – i.e. lie on official documents – to make it look like the Ospreys had better “Up” time. i.e. That the V-22 was not the absolute maintenance hangar queen that every pilot and air traffic controller aboard New River Air Station knew they were. It is an exceedingly small place and everyone there knows what the local pattern and taxiing looks like for “normal”, healthy operations, as a whole, and for each squadron. It’s evident on the radios, as well.
It can’t be hidden in reality, but it sure can be made to look a lot better on paper! Ahhhh, welcome to government acquisitions. CBS News followed up with a series of stories, including this Jan. 31, 2001, article that implicated several generals.
CBS News 60 Minutes Correspondent Mike Wallace reports there has apparently been a systematic effort by the Marine Corps to mislead the American public about the integrity of maintenance and safety data on the MV-22 Osprey — the aircraft in which 23 marines have died in crashes in the past ten months.
The commanding officer of the Osprey Unit, Lt. Col. Fred Leberman, was relieved of his command earlier this month for his acknowledged role in the falsification of records.
At the time of last week’s report, it was unclear if Marine Corps officers above Col. Leberman knew what was going on. CBS News has now learned that two of the Marine’s highest ranking officers apparently knew full well that data they were reporting about the Osprey were not accurate.
60 Minutes has obtained an email sent from Brigadier General James Amos to Lt. General Fred McCorkle, Deputy Commandant of Marine aviation.
Somewhere in the midst of all of this, LtCol Leberman’s assigned military defense counsel reaches out to me. Did I mention I was working as the chief prosecutor for MCB Quantico at the time?
But it’s a small Marine Corps and the guy who calls knows I was a Cobra pilot and he knows I was stationed at New River, so…
Why would the Marine Corps leadership distort the Osprey’s performance numbers? Perhaps because the Marines need to show that at least 75 percent of the entire Osprey squadron is “mission capable” before the Pentagon will approve full production of 360 of the aircraft at a cost of nearly $30 billion.
Gen. Amos said that any attack on the integrity of the Marine Corps “stings me like a hot poker to my heart.”
McCorkle’s callsign was “Assassin” – at least, that’s what he was going by when he was the 2d MAW CG and I was pilot in that Air Wing. When I was still a member and on my way into the base theater to hear him speak I asked about the moniker’s origin and an older pilot in the squadron told me it had nothing to do with battlefield feats, but referred to the careers of other officers he had destroyed. I have no idea if it is true or not.
BGen Amos would do just fine for himself and go on to become Commandant of the Marine Corps, notwithstanding his obvious involvement in perpetrating a fraud in order to continue to hold the Osprey program afloat, despite the fact that it couldn’t meet standards to get to “MILESTONE III”, the contractual gateway in order to allow further testing to happen. The Osprey should have been killed time and time again, yet somehow, it lived on through the blood sacrifices of young Marine pilots, aircrew, and troops in the back.
23 years later those guys have done well enough for themselves and how is the wonder aircraft doing? (From the June 2024 article)
After more than a dozen MV-22 Osprey incidents involving what is known as a hard clutch engagement, or HCE — including one that claimed the lives of five Marines — military officials now say that they have finally made progress in understanding the deadly issue.
“While the ultimate root cause has not yet been verified, the HCE team has narrowed down the scope of the investigation to a leading theory,” Neil Lobeda, a spokesman for the Osprey’s Joint Program Office, told Military.com in an email.
That theory, according to Lobeda, is something called “out of phase engagement.”
See? Nothing to worry about here. They’ve got a theory.
Futurists never correctly predict how technology will be used. If the Osprey ever becomes operationally useful it will be because it was repurposed to some as-yet-unseen need, and not the originally designed use-case. It could just wind up like many “neat” technologies that seemed so promising yet never live up to their potential, like Intellivision,3 Betamax,4 and many more. The difference is that this one is going to suck up maybe a trillion dollars and kill a bunch of Marines – it already has – along the way. And Boeing will continue to be one of the largest companies in the world while its aircraft kill military and civilians alike without consequence for anyone – because it’s the crony provider for the US government. And whistleblowers against it seem to die right when testimony begins.5
- There is an old joke in the Marine Corps defense bar that the quickest way to a short tour in defense is to win some acquittals. ↩︎
- Officer in Charge. ↩︎
- It was waaayyy better than Atari. I know, I was there, and the target audience. ↩︎
- Ditto. ↩︎
- You thought I was going to write a piece that my best friend Stinky died, well, HA! Not a chance. The Stinkmeister lives happily on Smith Mountain Lake (Va.) and if you ever want to rent a boat or get a good burger, go to Mitchell’s Marina. Tell ’em you’re a friend of the Snail’s and you may only have to pay a little more than retail. ↩︎
So this is the last one? Thanks for this series, Ozy. It’s one of the best.
Jeebus, Ozy. I doubt I ever had enough testosterone to even think about flying a chopper, much less an Osprey. That’s just nuts.
“Hey guys, I’ve got a great idea, hear me out. Let’s take a helicopter, and make it MORE dangerous!”
The final pic makes me chuckle.
“You want me to board that?!”
Is that thing throwing gang signs?
“Is that thing throwing gang signs?”
This was an under-appreciated comment, UnCiv.
Now I can’t unsee that.
Bravo.
So Leberman was the official sacrificial goat?
Yes, I read the whole thing in constant fear that I was going to find out your friend died in one of these.
No different from my experience with the expectation on public defenders.
Thanks for the series!
+1
Much interesting.
As one who has signed my name to safety of flight for nearly 20 years people like that deserve the firing squad. Pencil whipping is up in my top 5 of things I will go ballistic over.
NSA has a Facebook page and a YouTube channel:
https://www.facebook.com/NSAUSGov/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIFXe4zTsQY
You can’t spell INSANE without NSA!
Fantastic reportage,
What a fucked up story
OT… the semi-literate jackboots have been given their marching orders.
Tesla Chargers Vandalized with Swastikas
Imagine trying to make sense of the multiple layers of irony here ten or even five years ago.
semi-literate jackboots, you say?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mvP0ArKIGY
LOL that isn’t scary. Alternately inspiring (“take responsibility for myself!”) and laughably propagandistic but not what I would call “militant”.
I truly hope those young men in some way achieved their stated goals. There are more than enough unhappy people in the world as it is.
What goes through my head whenever I hear/read about the rigors of “elite” military training:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT9TgiPl-WM
Ugh gross but I’ve heard tales of much worse at frats. I don’t even see any butt stuff there.
At least raw eggs passed mouth to mouth won’t cause (near) death by alcohol poisoning:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6ZYrYptKu0
Oof I don’t think I want to watch that.
Thank you very much for this series. I learned a lot, I enjoyed the writing (though not the source material for the writing), and hope General Amos gets to pilot his very own V-22 stuffed with his cronies in fraud into an active resurgent caldera.
As I First through the valley of shadows and seconds…
…you take a look at your comments, and realize there’s nothin’ relevant?
Firsts are always relevant.
“I get an intermediate appellate stay in my anthrax vaccine refuser cases, halting the shots on the island. I have also defended a Marine charged with raping an Okinawa national in base housing and a Marine light-heavyweight boxer who punched an Okinawa woman in the face out in town… worst of all, I have done it with excessive zeal.”
Damn. That alone is a solid script.
Then it gets into terrifying territory.
I’m not a pilot, but absolutely none of that aircraft looks any combination of safe, operational, and/or practical. Fuck excessive complexity. More shit to break. People are paid (a lot) to *not* understand such, so ‘not understood’ it remains.
People accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty and should be allowed a chance to defend themselves.
Speaking of which, I finished my scavenger hunt for the local Florida State Attorney. Sent in all my receipts for fines and diplomas for classes, including the one for marijuana, which baffled my probation officer. I learned more about hemp than I ever wanted to know, including indirectly the best ways to beat a drug test.
Whatever. The process is the punishment. I’ve literally paid my debt to society. Minus my confiscated lever action, it comes out to about $500. Way better than a month in jail and a conviction. Jail food sucks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9A-wWnnYyK8
“If an accusation is enough to condemn someone, who could be called innocent?”
-Julian the Apostate, last pagan emperor of Rome
Agreed. Everyone has the right to the best (legal) defense possible. As solace for those tasked with such, being eager and gutsy for your client is at the very least good training for future clients, who might *not* be OJ-esque in murderosity, or without Gein-ish what-the-fuck(?!) -uppery.
That’s a sensible, and truthful, pill to help one’s psyche if it’s having issue justifying all the work that goes into defending a cunt. I’m also not a lawyer and have no legal training. I have been interrogated for fabricated assault in S Korea, and I was thankful to have counsel. I learned my rights on my own; they were never taught to me in school, where they shoulda been. Mom is guiltily ‘upset’ that I knew and asserted ’em to the cops to ward off an excessively-large K9 search of my, very much dirty vehicle and person.
Public schools not teaching this shit in civics? Great example of public schools legit disenfranchising minorities (and all) through purposefully keeping them ignorant of their rights. Folk should get their pitchforks out, but instead cash union checks and ballots.
Thanks OZY
I had a friend with an Intellivison. My Atari did not compare, but soon after the NES came out.
Hrm. You’re ‘the Snail,’ eh? I’d love to hear how you earned/ declared(?) that callsign.
(I’m sure mine would still be Short Fry. I strongly approve.)
Oof I missed that last footnote. 😯
I am 💯% sure my call sign would be a variant of my last name which has been applied to me since childhood and both affectionately and not.
This was excellent, Ozy. Thank you for sharing.
notwithstanding his obvious involvement in perpetrating a fraud in order to continue to hold the Osprey program afloat, despite the fact that it couldn’t meet standards to get to “MILESTONE III”, the contractual gateway in order to allow further testing to happen.
Despite? Sounds like proof that he’s service chief material. He seems to have screwed up on his post service corporate board membership.
Trump’s White House Counsel is a massive fucking would. And wood.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Warrington
?
Don’t kink shame Muzzled Woodchipper.
Great series Ozy. Many mahalos.
I was stationed at Ft Bragg before Iraq 2.0 and was sailing near Cherry Point when a pair of Ospreys went over on their way back to their base. A few hours later the local news radio reported one Osprey had crashed killing all aboard. A few months later an Osprey pilot and I were talking by our boats, and he told me the single scariest thing I had ever heard about any aircraft.
A human pilot is incapable of flying transition (engine vertical to horizontal or reverse that) because the changes required can’t be performed fast enough. The a/c must have the computer handle that. If the computer fails, transition fails, and bird goes “boom.” I later asked a Marine CH-46 who was in my seminar group at the AWC if that was true and he said it was and that is why he had no interest in transitioning to that a/c. Those words rang loudly in my head in Iraq in 2008 when I had to ride one out to the Syrian border, then to Fallujah and back to Baghdad.
All the CH-46s in Hawaii are gone after being replaced with the OV-22’s. In 2015 one crashed at Bellows Field on Oahu killing two and injuring multiple. The USMC called it a “hard landing.” It was hard alright. There were fatalities and the a/c burned to a crisp ~100m from the beach road.
Good morning all you people!
🌄😏🗽
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nWViLXy6UC0
🎶🎶
What do you mean ‘you people’?
A few days ago all your peeps were stacked in crates in the aisles of the grocery store.
🐤🐤🐤🐤🐤🐤🐤🐤🐤🐤🐤🐤🐤🐤🐤🐤
suh’ fam
whats goody
Good morning, homey, Sean, and Ted’S.!
Morning.
Apologies for connecting late, I got some extra sleep and needed to use my time for getting ready for work. I’ve made it to the office now, so I can ask my customary ‘how goes?’
How goes?
Well, thanks, although I may have to call off work because I have a cat on my lap. (My boss has two cats. He would probably understand.) How are you?
Well-rested, which is not a common state for me. I have many of my ducks in a row, and it has me calm.
Only meeting for today is the team meeting, which is just status updates, so no herding of cats for me (I don’t run it).
But it is wednesday, so I’m in the office.
Good mornin’, UCS
Missed you on the first review but not too late to say “Howdy”
Well-rested is excellent! So are ducks in rows.
🦆🦆🦆🦆
🦆🦆🦆🦆
🦆🦆🦆🦆
Morning, Fourscore.
Tall cans are not goody. :-p
Another great morning, GT, homey, TedS’ and Sean !
The snow is disappearing rapidly, see a little mud here and there. I left my truck outside last night, just too icy/slippery to try to get back into it to put it away. There’s a 100 lbs of corn in the back that I need to move into the cans on on the steps. When that corn is gone, I’ll put the cans away before some night critter decides to tip them over.
Good morning, 4(20)! Our snow, too, is disappearing, though it’s a bit chilly at the moment. (31 degrees) Come on, Spring!
Trash pandas or hive thieves?
Whitetailed Rats?
I didn’t realize they had the cognitive ability to knock things over deliberately.
The boy turkeys are acting a little strange, the ladies are unconcerned. Squirrels are chasing one another. It’s crazy out there!
Hello and good morning Glibs. It’s about time to get after the day. Looks beautiful out there, about to enter mud season.
Dawna
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BBMarEy10Gs
Good morning, ‘loosey!
“They’re Fired: 100 Intelligence Officials In Sick Chat Group ‘Terminated And Their Security Clearances Revoked’”
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/sex-castration-butthole-zapping-nsa-cia-confirm-secret-kink-chat-room-after-chris-rufo
Sick chat group? Maybe, you be the judge but it’s subjective. Inappropriate and stupid? Definitely, and on a backed up and nondeletable federal server no less. Retarded? Certainly and an indication of an organizational culture that’s as sloppy as a soup sandwich. Gabbard’s got a lot of work to do.
It is still inappropriate behavior for work settings on work systems.
You people don’t discuss your front hole orifice expansions during work hours via state computer resources? Sounds like a pretty stick-in-the-mud place to work.
Anything even mildly suggestive can be misconstrued and thus become a violation of harassment policies.
Anything explicit is an outright violation of harassment policies.
When I worked for the CIA back in college, I watched one of my blue-badge co-workers get escorted out of the building by two armed SPOs, for having a collection of X-rated jokes on a classified messaging system. At the time, they took that kind of fuckwittery very seriously. I guess I’m not surprised that they no longer do.
Not if your kink is practiced by a “protected class”.
In this case, no one cared about the particular kink or class; they cared about the misuse of a classified system. But this was pre-9/11, so who knows how the culture there has been poisoned…
This has been a fantastic series, Ozzy. Thank you so much for sharing.
I second this! I don’t get to be around much on Tuesdays but I have read each one!