The Dream Machine

by Richard Whittle

  * * *

  On July 12, Lieutenant Colonel Paul Martin, the top Marine pilot on the Osprey’s developmental flight test team, arrived at Eglin with Major Brian James, who had just joined the unit. Martin and James needed more hours in the Osprey to beef up their qualifications, and they were scheduled to take turns copiloting Aircraft 4 to Quantico. Boeing’s senior Osprey test pilot, Pat Sullivan, would be the pilot in command on the trip, but James would copilot to a refueling stop in Charlotte, North Carolina. Martin would arrive in a “chase plane” that would trail the Osprey and replace James as copilot during the stopover in Charlotte. As the test team’s senior military pilot, Martin wanted to step off Aircraft 4 when it landed at Quantico, be the officer who talked to the generals about the Osprey and the flight.

  The last shakedown flights were July 13, but there was still a lot of maintenance and repair to do before leaving. The APU kept acting up, the fuel system wouldn’t feed all its contents to the engines properly, and a long list of parts needed to be replaced. On Sunday, July 19, the day before the flight, a fuel pump had to be removed and replaced, which required putting Aircraft 4 in a special hangar to purge the fumes from one of its gas tanks. The mechanics could have used more time to get ready, but with the generals expected at Quantico when Aircraft 4 arrived on Monday, Boeing’s test team managers wanted to avoid another delay that might disappoint The Customer. Boeing managers had been calling Sullivan frequently to be sure he was going to make it to Quantico on July 20, when the generals would be there.

  Sunday afternoon, Sullivan went over his flight plan with the two Marines who would share copiloting duty, Martin and James, and Boeing test pilots Tom Macdonald and Grady Wilson. Macdonald and Wilson would fly “chase” behind Aircraft 4 in a twin-engine King Air turboprop plane, a standard practice with experimental aircraft such as the Osprey. With mechanics still working on Aircraft 4, Wilson could see that Sullivan was wound up tight. A former Army pilot and a U.S. Naval Test Pilot School graduate, Sullivan was forty-three. On Friday, he had given an engagement ring to his twenty-nine-year-old girlfriend, Sandy Knott, a flight operations assistant at Boeing in Ridley Park, who had come to Florida for the weekend. Once Sullivan got Aircraft 4 home, he and Sandy were planning to fly to Las Vegas, get married, and have a honeymoon. They had eaten lunch together that Sunday, then Sandy had driven to the airport to fly home while Pat went back to work. There was still a lot to do before Aircraft 4 could be cleared to fly to Quantico the next morning. One way or another, Sullivan had a lot on his mind.

  Sullivan stayed at the hangar with the Boeing mechanics until nine that night. Wilson and Macdonald went to the bar in the Fort Walton Beach Sheraton to have a beer with Marine mechanics Leader and Joyce, who would be part of Aircraft 4’s crew the next day. They spread maps on the table and talked about the flight plan. Joyce had been added to the crew just a couple of days earlier and was elated. Normal practice is to keep the crew flying an experimental aircraft to a minimum, putting as few people as possible at risk. Technically, Aircraft 4 needed only two pilots, an engineer to handle its flight test instrumentation, and one crew chief to operate the rear ramp and watch for problems to the sides and rear as the Osprey flew. In early July, though, Boeing’s test team leaders had decided to send a crew of seven. In addition to two pilots, Aircraft 4 would fly with two engineers, Bob Rayburn and Jerry Mayan, and two mechanics, Marty LeCloux and Tony Stecyk. To please the generals at Quantico, a Marine Corps crew chief, Master Gunnery Sergeant Leader, would be on board as well. Gunnery Sergeant Joyce had been left out originally, which had disappointed him. Joyce got his chance to fly on Aircraft 4 when mechanic LeCloux, fifty-four, told his boss that if he flew to Quantico, the company would need to fly him back to Destin so he could drive his wife home. Told that Boeing wouldn’t do that, LeCloux declined to go on Aircraft 4, and Boeing offered the Marines the seat. Joyce jumped at the chance.

  Engineer Jerry Mayan gladly would have given Joyce his seat. Tears of joy had welled in Mayan’s eyes a couple of years back when his boss asked if he wanted to be Aircraft 4’s lead instrumentation engineer, but Mayan disliked flying. He suffered motion sickness so severe he had to wear a medicated patch behind his ear to keep from getting nauseous when he flew. If he refused the assignment, though, Mayan told his wife, Kathi, he might have to look for another job. His bosses had made it clear they wanted their best people on Aircraft 4’s important flight to Quantico.

  * * *

  That Monday morning, Michelle and Tony Stecyk rose at 3 a.m. to prepare for their departures. While Tony flew east on the Osprey, Michelle would drive herself and Little Anthony back to Pennsylvania in her car. Her mother, Doris Mahler, and a family friend, Joseph “Buddy” Connor, would drive Tony’s pickup truck, pulling a trailer full of Harleys he had bought in Florida. Tony had flown Doris and Buddy to Florida for that purpose after he was chosen to fly back on the Osprey. Sunday night they’d all gone out to dinner to celebrate Buddy’s birthday. At the restaurant, Tony kept explaining to Little Anthony that he wouldn’t see Daddy for a week, but next Friday, Mommy and Little Anthony would pick Daddy up at the airport.

  By 5 a.m. Monday, everything was ready to go, so Michelle drove Tony to Eglin. At the gate, Tony said he felt guilty about leaving her and 220 her mother to make the eighteen-hour drive home without him. Maybe he should do like Marty LeCloux and just tell Boeing he couldn’t fly today, he said. Michelle wouldn’t hear of it. “This is something you’ve wanted to do,” she said. “You’re already set and ready to go.” He’d worked as hard as anyone else, she reminded him. He deserved to step off the Osprey at Quantico and be applauded by all the big shots. Michelle watched Tony walk through the base gate, then drove back to Blue Water Bay to check out and start the trip home.

  About four hours later, aboard Aircraft 4, Sullivan told Stecyk over the internal communication system: “Okay, Tony, get her buttoned up as soon as you can so we can get going.” Stecyk was in the back cabin with engineer Mayan and crew chiefs Leader and Joyce. Mayan had a seat near a big pallet of test instruments toward the rear of the Osprey. Engineer Bob Rayburn would sit in a fold-down jump seat between and just behind the pilots in the cockpit, where Sullivan was in the left seat and Major Brian James in the right. It was 9:48 a.m., Aircraft 4’s rotors were turning, and they were finally ready to go, but running late. Sullivan had expected to depart a couple of hours earlier than this when he’d assured his bosses Aircraft 4 would be at Quantico by 3 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time. Eglin Air Force Base was on Central Daylight Time, so their planned arrival time at Quantico was just over four hours away.

  Mechanics had begun a final preflight inspection at 6:30 a.m. At 6:49, the crew synchronized the flight test and data monitoring instruments on board, including a tape recorder to preserve what the crew said throughout the trip. They had to postpone their takeoff when the inspection found a pop-up button protruding from an oil filter in the mid-wing gearbox, a sign the filter was so clogged it needed changing. Stecyk pulled the filter and replaced it, and by 8 a.m., they thought they were ready to go. On reinspection, though, Stecyk discovered the popup button triggered again and had to do more work on the gearbox. Then, when Sullivan tried to start the engines, the APU balked, shutting down before the turbines could power up. An advisory on a display screen told Sullivan the APU was overheating. Messages like that were often caused by faulty sensors instead of real problems in the prototype Ospreys, and pilots could override an APU shutdown by setting the device to “emergency start.” The feature was meant to let combat pilots fly out of danger, and using it could damage the APU. If Sullivan overrode the shutdown, the APU might not restart after they turned off Aircraft 4’s engines to refuel in Charlotte. With his window for getting to Quantico by 3 P.M. narrowing, Sullivan took the gamble.

  The engines were roaring as Stecyk got the wheel chocks removed and closed the side door and rear ramp. Sullivan told James to taxi out to Eglin’s runway 01.

  * * *

 
; At 9:53 a.m., Aircraft 4 begins rolling, nacelles pointed straight up, big rotors turning. James pauses the Osprey while an F-16 fighter plane takes off, then turns onto the runway.

  “Okay, I’m just going to get a little more to center, if that’s okay with you, Pat,” James says. “I know we’re in a hurry.”

  At 9:55 a.m., with Sullivan coaching him, James begins his fifth flight hour in an Osprey, tilting the nacelles forward gradually to make a rolling takeoff, which uses less fuel than taking off like a helicopter. For those in the back cabin, the takeoff feels like a ride in a dragster. As the engines start delivering full power, the acceleration presses their bodies rearward. The feeling is one reason the few pilots and crew chiefs who’ve had a chance to fly in the Osprey love it. The old joke is that helicopters don’t fly, they beat the air into submission. The Osprey flies. Helicopters rattle and vibrate, shuddering under their rotors. The Osprey, with its rotors on its wingtips, doesn’t quake like a helicopter. The ride is smooth, and as its big proprotors bite into the air, Aircraft 4 climbs hungrily. As it does, James brings the rotors and nose to the same angle. Less than three minutes after leaving the ground, Sullivan reports to the Eglin tower that Osprey Nine One Four is passing through 1,000 feet, on its way to 15,500, their cruising altitude today.

  As they climb, Sullivan takes the controls. He also radios the tower to ask that someone call Boeing pilots Grady Wilson and Tom Macdonald in the King Air chase plane and tell them Aircraft 4 is on its way. The King Air, with Lieutenant Colonel Martin aboard as a passenger, has been orbiting miles to the south for half an hour, awaiting word to join up with Aircraft 4. The chase plane pilots were expecting Sullivan to wait for them, but he’s in too big a hurry. At 10:10, Sullivan radios Wilson that the Osprey is at 14,500 feet and flying 180 knots on a course that will take them over Eufaula, Alabama. “Okay,” Wilson says. “We’ll try to catch up, Pard.”

  The weather is clear, and it’s a perfect day to fly. Six minutes after talking to Wilson, though, Sullivan tells his crew they have a problem. “RTB Rotor,” he reports, reading a display screen warning that means “Return to Base—Rotor.” Aircraft 4’s flight clearance, a list of do’s and don’ts, requires Sullivan to land as soon as possible with such a caution. Sullivan tells James to take the controls while he, Rayburn, and Mayan discuss things. After four minutes, Rayburn tells Sullivan: “Okay, if we can’t, ah, isolate that rotor, we’re going to have to come down.”

  “Come down where, Bob?” Sullivan replies.

  “That’s urgent,” Rayburn tells him. “That’s a ‘return to base.’ You can’t continue.”

  “Well, I know,” Sullivan says. “We’ll have to go back to Eglin.”

  “Right,” Rayburn agrees.

  “Any other troubleshooting we can do?” Sullivan asks hopefully.

  “We’re working on it,” Rayburn assures him.

  “Okay. We might as well push on and see what—you know, see what you can come up with,” Sullivan says. “We’ve got plenty of fuel to turn around.” Sullivan doesn’t want to return to base. He wants to get to Quantico today, as he’s promised his bosses.

  Five minutes later, Rayburn tells Sullivan the problem appears to be a loose wire, judging by readings from an instrument in back. “Probably we don’t have any kind of clearance to continue with that,” Rayburn adds. “How do you call it?” Others can offer advice during a flight, but the pilot in command, like a ship’s captain, holds the final authority.

  “Well, you—you say you think it’s a wire?” Sullivan replies. “Or not, do not think it’s a wire?”

  “We’re pretty sure it is a wire.”

  “I say we continue, then,” Sullivan decides. He asks copilot James if he has any objection.

  “No,” James says. “I can live with that.”

  A few seconds later, Sullivan asks Rayburn to calculate how much longer they can fly on the fuel remaining. “We’ll have five sixty-seven miles to go,” Sullivan says, citing the remaining distance to Quantico. Sullivan doesn’t say so, but less than thirty minutes into the flight, he’s thinking about skipping the refueling stop in Charlotte. If they land there, they might not make it to Quantico, for two reasons. First, the APU might not restart the engines. More important, after landing with a “Return to Base” warning, taking off again will be a major safety violation. Boeing and the Osprey program office at Navair want Aircraft 4 at Quantico today. Sullivan is determined to get it there.

  As Rayburn works on the fuel calculation, Wilson radios from the chase plane to ask what Sullivan has decided.

  “If things stay as they are, we’re going to go ahead and continue,” Sullivan tells him. “And also, we’re going to have to make a call to push to Quantico, if fuel flow and distance allow it.”

  Wilson replies that he and Macdonald can’t understand what Sullivan is saying because of static on the radio but assume he’s decided to continue the flight.

  “A little excitement in the beginning, huh?” James says to Sullivan.

  At 10:32, Rayburn gives Sullivan their fuel status. “Two and a half hours to flame out,” Rayburn tells him, adding that the Osprey is cruising at a ground speed of 240 knots, or 276 miles an hour. Two minutes later, Wilson radios to say the Osprey is leaving its chase plane behind. “We’re pedaling as hard as we can,” Wilson says. “We just can’t catch up. You got too much on us.”

  “Understand,” Sullivan replies.

  Just then, Rayburn tells Sullivan they’ve lost all ability to monitor whether the left rotor is functioning properly. All sensor readings are “breaking up,” he says. “They’re all fluctuating, bouncing. Probably a slip ring wiring problem.” A slip ring is a tube that conveys electricity to the Osprey’s rotor heads through wire brushes. It powers sensors that measure vibration and other stresses on the rotor head and swashplate actuators and warn if they are exceeding their limits. A slip ring failure on the ground would keep an Osprey from flying until repaired.

  Eight minutes after Rayburn gives Sullivan the slip ring diagnosis, a radio signal tells the pilots they are near Eufaula. “About five hundred miles to go,” Sullivan says. It is 10:43 a.m.

  Two minutes later, Rayburn reports a new fuel calculation. Boeing’s rules require them to land with thirty minutes’ worth of fuel, usually about a thousand pounds. “Unless we pick up some more headwind, I show us on the ground with seven hundred pounds, total,” Rayburn says.

  “That’s at Charlotte? For Charlotte?” Sullivan asks.

  “That would be Quantico.”

  “Wow,” Sullivan says.

  “We’d have the oodles to get to Charlotte,” Rayburn says. “But you had asked me about Quantico, right?”

  “Yes,” Sullivan replies.

  Two minutes later, Sullivan tells James, “Appreciate your hanging with us, Brian.”

  “What’s that, now?” asks James, who has been navigating their course.

  “This has not been an easy start up and go,” Sullivan says. “I appreciate you hanging with us.”

  “Hey, man, this is my job,” the young major tells him. “I’m loving it.”

  Within minutes, Aircraft 4 has crossed the Georgia state line and entered Eastern Daylight Time. At 11:53 a.m. EDT, Sullivan radios Wilson in the chase plane to tell him where the Osprey is. “We’re going to look at pushing all the way to Quantico,” Sullivan says. “Would you guys be able to make that?”

  “Negative,” Wilson replies. The King Air has burned too much fuel trying in vain to catch up to Aircraft 4.

  “Okay,” Sullivan says.

  Shortly after noon, Sullivan and Rayburn talk again about fuel. At the speed they’re flying, Rayburn reports, there’s enough for two hours. Quantico is now about 470 miles distant, and Rayburn calculates they can get there in about an hour and forty minutes. The key question is whether they can arrive with a thousand pounds of fuel in reserve, as required.

  “Well, it’s doable,” Sullivan says. “Let’s keep an eye on things and make a deci
sion outside of Charlotte. I think we ought to push it if it’s feasible, because otherwise we’re . . . you know, we’d never get out of Charlotte.”

  “Yeah,” James agrees. “I personally don’t have a problem with that, Pat.” James says he’s worried, though, about how Lieutenant Colonel Martin is going to react if they skip Charlotte, where Martin is supposed to replace James as copilot. “Hey, Pat,” James says, “if you decide to go to Quantico, could you ask Grady to pass that to the colonel, and at least give him an opportunity to comment?”

  “Yeah, okay,” Sullivan says.

  “I mean, I know you guys are the boss, but at least that makes it look like I tried,” James says.

  At 12:15, James perks up when he notices they’re just six miles from Greenwood, South Carolina, about one hundred miles south of Charlotte. “Shee-dawgie!” the major exclaims.

  “Yeah, beats a Phrog,” Sullivan says, referring to the CH-46.

  “We’re humming,” James adds a minute later.

  A minute after that, Sullivan radios their position to Wilson and Macdonald. “We’re going to make a decision here pretty quick, and perhaps proceed to Quantico,” Sullivan tells them.

  Three minutes later, Charlotte comes into view.

  “How much time to Quantico, do you estimate?” James asks.

  Rayburn replies: “About an hour and twenty-four minutes, twenty-five minutes, to Quantico.” He and Sullivan discuss how much fuel they’ll have left if they continue past Charlotte. Rayburn estimates they’ll use 40 percent of their reserve, but Sullivan notes that they’ll burn fuel less rapidly as they descend.