highsea

That would have been a nightmare to fly, turn left nose goes up, pitch down, plane goes right, etc. Precessing a gyroscope.

And they say the Sopwith Camel was a bastard, lol. That thing would have been a death trap.

__________________
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dalem

Hey, pound for pound, do Osprey's really crash more than regular helicopters? Because my general layman's impression is that "good ol' regular" military helicopters crash a LOT.

-dale

highsea

Dale, the Osprey has been hit with several very high-profile crashes, which caused a lot of starts-and-stops in the dev cycle. The first production frames are just now being delivered. It will take some time to know it will compare to other rotorcraft.

Development cycles are always marked by higher accident rates, that's when the bugs are uncovered, the flight envelope certified, etc. The V-22 had roughly the same accident rate as the F-14 during the same phase.

Jimmy

The biggest differences were that the Tom had ejection seats for both crewmembers, while the Osprey had to carry 20 guys in every time.

I have no idea WHY they felt the need to fully man that thing so early in testing. They knew there were bugs...load it with cargo or something for a while until the big things seem solved.

highsea

They weren't fully manned (you need the flight crew). All in all, it's had 30 fatalities in 4 crashes, only one time was it fully manned.

The first crash was in 1991, 2 years into testing- incorrect wiring in the flight controls, the plane crashed while hovering. The flight crew sustained minor injuries.

The 1992 crash was the first fatal crash and killed the flight crew and 4 Boeing flight test engineers. The plane was prototype #4, on a test flight at Quantico. It was misreported that it was 7 marines killed, and that the flight was a demo flight. The cause was hydraulic leak into one engine nacelle.

The next crash was the Arizona crash in 2000. This was a production MV-22 that had been delivered to the Marines for OPEVAL. It was taking part in a training exercise with 3 other Ospreys. This crash wasn't early in the testing, it was 11 years in, and well into the OPEVAL phase. The Osprey was certified for passengers by then. This was the one that was supposed to have been caused by power settling. 19 marines lost their lives- this was the crash that generated the huge media attention.

The third fatal crash was in december of 2000, during a night instrument landing practice, another hydraulic leak, and when the pilot hit a system reset button 8 or 9 times, a software glitch caused the plane to lose power each time. The 4 flight crew lost their lives.

The Osprey was in a crisis at this point, and was grounded indefinitely. Investigations showed a lot of mismanagement in the program, failure to conduct required tests, ignoring known problems, etc. The Osprey went through 3 years of re-engineering to address the problems, followed up by a comprehensive flight test regime before it got back on track.

A warning system was put in place to warn of impending VRS (the test pilots say it's a lot harder to induce VRS in Osprey than in a conventional helo), all the hydraulics have been redone, and the software re-written.

We have had 4 years of relatively trouble-free operation (there's been a couple class B mishaps, IIRC), and the Air Force has taken delivery of several CV versions, so hopefully the troubles are behind us.

dalem

Thanks, that's what I wanted to know.

-dale