Reporters take V-22 test flights

Reporters take V-22 test flights
Pentagon lets troubled aircraft testify on its own behalf

07:35 AM CDT on Thursday, July 14, 2005

By RICHARD WHITTLE / The Dallas Morning News

MARINE CORPS AIR STATION NEW RIVER, N.C. - I thought I might be
retired before this happened.

Wednesday, after more than two decades of design and testing and fatal
crashes and redesign and retesting, the Marine Corps let the news media
ride on the exotic tilt-rotor aircraft known as the V-22 Osprey for the
first time.

And after nearly two decades of writing about the helicopter-airplane
hybrid, I was in the first group of reporters and photographers who
climbed aboard.

Friends and relatives raised eyebrows. After all, 23 Marines perished
in two fatal V-22 crashes in 2000 - disasters that nearly led the
Pentagon to cancel the $50.5 billion project to develop the futuristic
troop transport.

And in the years since, enough critics have declared the Osprey simply
too daring in concept and complex in design to fly safely. In the
public mind, the V-22 has come to be regarded as risky at best and, at
worst, a death trap.

I was never nervous. I figured the Marines wouldn't have invited us if
they weren't sure the Osprey was ready for prime time.

It was quite a ride.

V-22 program officials scheduled the Media Day at New River as part of
a push to publicize what they regard as stunningly good results in
operational tests earlier this year.

Air Force Col. Craig Olson, of Dripping Springs, Texas, hopes to win
Pentagon approval in September to begin "full-rate production" of the
Osprey, which is partly built in Fort Worth and Amarillo by Bell
Helicopter Textron Inc. in a 50-50 partnership with the
Pennsylvania-based helicopter division of Boeing Co.

The Marines plan to build 360 Ospreys. The Air Force has plans to buy
50 for special operations and other missions, while the Navy has a
long-range plan to take 48. Ospreys currently cost about $71 million
each, but the goal is to get the price down to $58 million a plane by
2010.

If all goes according to plan, the first squadron could be operational
in 2007. But first, Col. Olson admits, the Marines need to dispel some
popular distrust.

The goal, said Lt. Gen. Michael Hough, Marine deputy commandant for
aviation, is "to prove to American parents that their sons and
daughters are safe flying this airplane."


Preflight briefing

The day's events began with a quick demonstration in which two V-22s
dropped two squads of Marines in a grassy area near the tarmac. Then we
got a two-hour briefing in the pilots' ready room at VMX-22, the test
squadron that has tested eight redesigned V-22s.

Those tests followed more than 2,000 previous hours flown by test
pilots from Bell and Boeing, and the Naval Air Systems Command after
the Osprey had been grounded, investigated and redesigned.

In the ready room, Marine Col. Glenn "Bluto" Walters, commander of
VMX-22, and Col. Olson gave us facts and figures on how well the V-22
has done flying 4,400 hours of mock combat missions in conditions from
snow to sand-swirling deserts.

Col. Walters said the Osprey has done it all - including some things
some critics still insist this exotic aircraft can't.

The Osprey has two huge rotors on its wingtips mounted on "nacelles"
that swivel. By tilting its rotors vertically, the V-22 can take off
and land like a helicopter. By tilting them forward, it can fly like a
turboprop airplane - at about twice the speed of troop transport
helicopters the Marines now use.

Skeptics have argued that the transition from forward flight to
helicopter mode and back was too slow to get into and out of landing
zones under fire.

They've said the downwash from the aircraft's powerful rotors is so
strong that troops would be unable to "fast-rope" down from a hovering
Osprey the way they can from helicopters.

The video showed the Ospreys of VMX-22 doing all that and more. In one
scene, Marines fast-roped out the back ramp of an Osprey, just as they
do out the sides of helicopters. In another, a V-22 set down in a
desert, where it disappeared in a cloud of dust but - Col. Walters
assured us - landed and took off without mishap.

"What he's really saying is, they passed everything with flying
colors," Gen. Hough translated.


A first

After the briefing, those of us in the first "stick" - military lingo
for a group flying together - were given a safety briefing: what to
do in case of a fire or other emergency. Then we were handed waivers to
sign absolving the Marine Corps of any liability.

Then we walked down through a hangar, jammed on tight helmets with
ear-protectors and goggles called cranials and filed across the steamy
tarmac to two waiting Ospreys whose rotors were whirling loudly in the
vertical position.

My stick included a CNN crew of three; three other print reporters who,
like me, have been covering the V-22 for years; and representatives
from the Naval Air Systems Command and Bell-Boeing.

"You're the first non-government people to fly on this," Col. Walters
told us. "I'll be real interested to see what you think."

Jamie McIntyre, CNN's good-natured senior Pentagon correspondent,
quipped: "Before or after we stop throwing up?"

Lt. Col. Christopher Seymour, 40, of Houston, was our pilot, backed by
a co-pilot and two crewmen.

V-22s, like all military helicopters, are loud. But unlike a
helicopter, the V-22's rotors don't make that "whump-whump" sound. We
taxied out to the runway without the shudder and rattle of a chopper.

We had been on the runway only seconds when the Osprey started rolling
faster, lifted slowly off the ground, then rocketed upward as Lt. Col.
Seymour tilted the rotors forward. It felt like flooring it in a
Corvette.

Quickly we were up to 500 feet, heading down the New River toward the
North Carolina coast 20 miles away. We whisked over boats and a bridge,
then banked hard left, leveled off and cruised north above Onslow
Beach, where the Marines practice amphibious landings.

Fly guy

We flew north a few minutes, then Lt. Col. Seymour put the Osprey into
a 2G turn that pressed me back against the bulkhead, circling us around
to head back south.

Out the rear ramp, we could see coastal marshlands as we headed back
inland. Then the Osprey began to decelerate almost as quickly as it had
gained speed and settled toward the ground.

Lt. Col. Seymour set the Osprey down quickly but gently in the grass
and let the wheels touch the ground for a few seconds. Then we lifted
off again, rotors roaring, and hovered over the landing zone.

Now the Osprey began turning slowly in a circle as it hovered at 50 or
60 feet. Still hovering, Lt. Col. Seymour put the aircraft into a slow
drift to the right, then to the left.

Then without warning, the fuselage began to tilt upward, the engines
whined and we shot into a steep climb, gaining speed and enough
altitude to make my ears pop.

I looked over at Jamie McIntyre, a longtime colleague and friend who
suffers from motion sickness. He was looking green around the gills.
One of the crew chiefs noticed too and worked his way over to hand him
an airsick bag.

None too soon. As we circled the airfield in preparation for landing,
Jamie began using the airsick bag for its intended purpose, and in some
distress.

With the nacelles pointed up and slightly forward, we came down
steadily, landing like a conventional airplane - but with the rotors
tilted upward at an angle - and taxiing quickly back to the hangar.

As we sat down inside to a lunch of barbecue sandwiches and hot dogs, I
asked Jamie, who wasn't eating, how he'd enjoyed the flight.

"I'm proud to be the first civilian to throw up in the V-22," he joked.


And I was there.