Osprey Damaged

[SGRock]

Marines Osprey Damaged
Associated Press | March 28, 2006

MARINE CORPS AIR STATION NEW RIVER, N.C. - The Marine Corps said Monday it was investigating an accident with an MV-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft that damaged its right wing and engine.
No one was injured, either on board the aircraft or on the ground at the air base at Jacksonville, the Corps said in a statement.
"The aircraft damage resulted from an inadvertent takeoff followed by a hard landing" during a test flight following maintenance on the Osprey, according to the statement.
The statement offered no further details. A base spokesman couldn't be reached by telephone.
The Osprey was assigned to Marine Medium Tiltrotor Training Squadron 204.
Earlier this year, the Corps said it would begin deploying the Osprey in combat zones within a year and activated a squadron of the aircraft, which are designed to replace Vietnam-era CH-46E twin rotor helicopters.
The aircraft takes off and lands like a helicopter but flies like an airplane.
The aircraft program was halted for a review after crashes in 2000 that killed four Marines in North Carolina and 19 in Arizona. But the $19 billion program was restarted by the Pentagon last year.

[USMCRET6391]

It's unfortunate, but no matter how well this thing flies and performs from now on because of it's developement problems and those two accidensts, the idiot press is going to jump on every bit of bad news it can find about it. That's what post maintenance test flights are for, make sure the damn thing is safe to fly.

excuse me if I am wrong, but from what I have read this Osprey has been nothing but a big bug since it's first test flight. I understand the principle of test flights, before and after maintainance and reports, but seems this birdie really does not want to do what she is supposed to do. And who knows maybe it is not the bird but the pilots who need some better training.

[Grimmy]

Helicopeters were just one big bug during their initial development phase too. Same for "powered flight" craft in general.

Same for motorized land vehicles in the beginning of their development...and I'm sure, if such records were kept, we'd find pretty much the same issues with the development of the wheel.

Everything new starts out rough.

[Vulture6]

More CH-46s have crashed in the last 10 years than Ospreys.

Of course, they've logged a bunch more hours. But put it in perspective, the Osprey was developed in the 80s, and the 46s in the 60s. That puts both of them at "pretty damned old for an aircraft"!

[Grimmy]

^ design and concept wise, maybe. But dont forget that the basic concept of the rotory winged craft dates back, at least in part, to da vinci lol.

Aircraft "age" is an issue of frame stressors over time isnt it? (not being snarky, really asking. I know some of y'all work air craft and will know better than me)

Ospre is a "first of concept" craft. If its development and deployment fulfulls strategic/tactical/logistics needs (issues I really have no clue on) shouldnt it be persued? And if it no longer fulfills any of those needs, should it be dropped? Or should the concept be worked out to completion, just because it's a new thing and might be useful later?

Experiments with rotory winged craft started in the '30s (or there abouts) and we didnt get a real deployment and use of em until Korea in the early '50s. And the concept of "air mobile" warfare wasnt realized until Vietnam in the '60s.

[Vulture6]

The newest CH-46 was built in 1974. There have been no new airframes since then... only rebuilds.

My point, though obscure, is that we've been sitting on the Osprey for well over a decade while our Congress and defense contractors play games to get enough pork spread over enough congressional districts to get the damn thing (or some other medium lift replacement) built. We've all had friends die in a phrog falling out of the sky when the damn thing should have been retired years ago. So, the Osprey needs to be pushed forward with full realization that bumps, and crashes, and unfortunately deaths, will go right along with it. We played too many games with funding back in the 90s to back off from or slow down the Osprey now.

[USMCRET6391]

Originally Posted by Grimmy

Aircraft "age" is an issue of frame stressors over time isnt it? (not being snarky, really asking. I know some of y'all work air craft and will know better than me).

Aircraft age is measured in "Service Time". That is, from the time the individual aircraft airframe entered active service. The new Ospreys haven't been a round long enough for this to be an issue unless there are some serious structural design flaws. From the article, it sounds like the pilot had a "hard landing" which would damage any aircraft at any point in it's service life. From an old A/C maintenance tech's perspective, I think the idiot wearing the head set screwed up not the A/C

[cincymarsdad]

Originally Posted by SGRock

"The aircraft damage resulted from an inadvertent takeoff followed by a hard landing" during a test flight following maintenance on the.

I fly little planes (Cessna 172s mostly) I can't recall ever having an "inadvertent takeoff". The only thing I can surmise is that someone was ground testing the engines and hit a lever that changed the prop pitch and generated lift and "took off" and then put the pitch back into neutral and fell the 20 feet or whatever back to the ground. Potentially, the could have been a ground maintenance technician and not a pilot, right? Of course, that is contrary to the term "test flight", as is "inadvertent takeoff".

Prop pitch and throttle controls often are grouped close together in my experience. [A Cessna 172 doesn't have variable prop pitch, just a throttle, so things are a lot simpler.]

[USMCRET6391]

The key words are "post maintenance test flight". These are always performed after cetain meaintenance tasks are completed. It appears to me that the operator did the wrong thing (as per your post above) during the test and broke the damn thing.