The Dream Machine

by Richard Whittle

  “Okay,” Sullivan says at 12:23, “anybody have any problem with proceeding?”

  “You just got to defend me when we get there,” James says.

  At 12:24, Sullivan radios the chase plane that the Osprey is going straight through to Quantico. He asks Wilson and Macdonald to call ahead when they land at Charlotte to alert the Marine base that the Osprey will arrive early.

  “Could you ask them to pass that to Colonel Martin?” James says. “I know they will anyway, but I wanted to make it seem like I’m . . .”

  “Oh, they will, Brian,” Sullivan breaks in. “They got an overhead speaker.”

  “He’s going to chew my ass, boy,” James says. “Woooh! It’ll be worth it, but I tell you what, I’m going to stay away from him.”

  “Yeah,” Sullivan replies.

  “He’s going to be pissed, I’m telling you,” James tells Sullivan a minute later. “Ooh, boy! He’ll understand what you’re trying to do, though, too.”

  “If we go into Charlotte, we—we were not getting out today,” Sullivan offers. “And you know, I don’t—I don’t think there’s any safety issues.”

  Neither Sullivan nor anyone else aboard has any way of knowing it, but as they fly, liquid from a leak somewhere has been pooling in the cowling of their right nacelle, a covering on the engine’s mouth whose purpose is to improve aerodynamics. The liquid is flammable.

  * * *

  Two minutes later, James says everyone aboard will have to say they agreed with Sullivan’s decision to skip Charlotte, “because I guarantee when we stop they’re going to be asking us. I feel comfortable. I would not have flown, believe me—I’ve got four kids—I would not have done it.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Sullivan says. “I hear you.”

  Martin is going to be angry in any case, James predicts. “And when I step out and if the commandant’s there?”

  * * *

  The commandant, General Carl Mundy, had planned to be at Quantico when Aircraft 4 arrived. Banners advertising the arrival for 1430 hours, 2:30 P.M., this Monday have been hung at Headquarters Marine Corps. Following Cheney’s decision less than three weeks ago to offer Congress a compromise on the Osprey, though, Mundy has decided not to risk agitating the defense secretary. Colonel Jim Schaefer, the Osprey program manager, has been told to host the event at Quantico instead.

  As Aircraft 4 flies across North Carolina, Schaefer is driving to Quantico, expecting the Osprey between 2:30 and 3 P.M. With him are his wife, a neighbor, and a friend’s daughter. They all want to see the exotic tiltrotor firsthand.

  Major Kevin Dodge of the Multiservice Operational Test Team is at Quantico already. Dodge and the other Marines in the MOTT are also assigned to HMX-1, the eighty-pilot special squadron that flies the president and other government VIPs in helicopters and tests new rotorcraft for the Marines. Dodge is in his office at HMX-1 headquarters, getting ready for Aircraft 4’s arrival. He’s looking forward to using the Osprey this week, and to seeing Brian James, one of his best friends in the Marine Corps. Dodge and James went through flight school together, flew in the same CH-46 Sea Knight squadron, served in Beirut together. They’ve hit the bars in ports around the world. Dodge enjoys James, a tall, good-looking guy with wavy brown hair who’s always cracking jokes in his inner-city Baltimore twang. They talked on the phone Sunday night and had a good laugh about how two knuckleheads like Brian James and Kevin Dodge might soon be running both types of flight testing, developmental and operational, for the Marine Corps’ most prized aviation program. Dodge is eager to see James again.

  * * *

  At 1:05 P.M., over South Boston, Virginia, Sullivan begins a slow descent to 10,500 feet. “I have a big feeling the colonel is going to chew my ass,” James says. “He’s been planning on doing this for so long.”

  “I know. I know,” Sullivan says.

  “What can I tell him, Pat?”

  “Tell him I whined so hard that they got sick of listening to me and . . .”

  “I’m going to say, ‘Pat overruled me,’ ” James interrupts. “I’m just going to take it like a man.”

  “Yeah.”

  “There’s nothing I could have done anyway to convince you, would it have?” James ventures.

  “No.”

  “That’s why—”

  “Yeah, you could have,” Sullivan interrupts.

  “I could have called it safety—called it safety of flight, but I couldn’t— I couldn’t do that, though,” James says.

  “No, I don’t think so,” Sullivan agrees.

  Two minutes later, James asks Sullivan to let him take the controls again. “Might as well enjoy them now,” James says. “Might be the last time I get them, after Colonel Martin gets a hold of me.”

  At 1:21 P.M., Sullivan is talking to the Quantico control tower on the radio. “Osprey Nine One Four will be requesting a high-speed flyby down runway two,” he says.

  Two minutes later, Sullivan takes the controls back from James. They discuss the best way to execute the flyby, a way to show off the Osprey’s speed in airplane mode.

  “Make it gentle on the flyby,” Rayburn urges.

  “Okay. Yeah, it will be,” Sullivan replies. “I always fly this thing gentle.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Rayburn says. “Extra gentle. Kid gloves.”

  “Extra gentle, okay,” Sullivan promises. “I can do that.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Sullivan is descending to 1,500 feet with the Quantico Marine Base and the Potomac River in sight.

  “Boy, is the colonel going to be pissed,” James says.

  “I’m going to tell him you didn’t argue one bit, sir,” Gunnery Sergeant Joyce teases from the back cabin.

  “Aw, you can ruin my career if you do that, Gunny!” James replies in mock horror. “There’s the runway, you can see it,” he tells Sullivan.

  As Sullivan brings the Osprey down through 1,000 feet, on the way to 500 for the flyby, James can hardly contain himself. “I’m sure the general will be here at the field,” he says, meaning the commandant.

  “If he’s here yet,” engineer Rayburn interjects. They’re nearly an hour ahead of their most optimistic schedule.

  A minute later, they see the Quantico runway. “All the people are going to be sitting about—you see where the cross runway is?” James says.

  “Yeah,” says Sullivan.

  “They’ll come up and should be sitting in stands just halfway between the runway and the hangars, if there are people there.”

  “Yeah,” Sullivan says. “I don’t see many.”

  “Well, good,” James says. “I mean, that’s good for me. Make sure you tell the colonel that.”

  As Sullivan executes his flyby at 500 feet, zooming past the airfield at 238 knots, he tells James: “See, nobody there.”

  “Good,” James says.

  “Yeah, there are,” Rayburn interjects. “There’s a few there.” It is 1:40 P.M.

  * * *

  Rayburn is seeing Major Dodge, other members of his MOTT test team, a handful of Marines from HMX-1, and a few Boeing and Bell engineers and executives. Alerted by radio that Aircraft 4 is coming in early, they’ve gathered on the flight ramp to watch the Osprey do its flyby and land. After buzzing the field, Sullivan climbs back up to about 1,300 feet and makes a broad left turn across the Potomac. Now he is flying northward on the east side of the river, under scattered clouds. A Boeing employee standing next to Dodge is videotaping Aircraft 4’s approach as Sullivan begins tilting the Osprey’s nacelles upward, converting the rotors from airplane mode as he gets ready to fly like a helicopter and make a vertical landing on the Quantico runway. In the cockpit, on Sullivan’s instruction, James has started lowering the Osprey’s landing gear.

  Watching from the ground as the Osprey flies past a cloud in the distance, nacelles angled upward at 44 degrees, Dodge is alarmed to see a puff of dark smoke come from the front of its right nacelle. A second or two later, a muffled “poomf!” wafts across the river fro
m the Osprey.

  “Ooooh,” James says in the cockpit, then adds four seconds later: “Noise, a weird sound.”

  From the ground, Dodge now sees the Osprey give off a puff of white smoke, then hears another “poomf!” A couple of seconds later, he sees yet another puff of white and hears a third “poomf!” Then he sees flames licking out of Aircraft 4’s right nacelle.

  In the cockpit, James tells Sullivan the landing gear is down.

  “Okay,” Sullivan says, then adds five seconds later: “Looks like an engine fail.”

  “We just lost the right engine,” James confirms.

  On the ground, Dodge watches as Aircraft 4 turns left, banking slightly, and heads toward him across the river, nacelles still midway between airplane and helicopter mode. Then he sees the right rotor begin to turn more slowly than the left. What he sees next seems surreal, as if happening in slow motion. Aircraft 4 is dropping from the sky. My God, Dodge thinks, they’re coming down.

  In the cockpit, at 1:42 P.M., James shouts into the radio: “Mayday, Mayday, we’re going in! We’re going in!”

  Over the next five seconds, as those on the ground watch in disbelief, Aircraft 4 leans slightly right, then yaws left, sliding through the air like a car skidding through a curve. Its bulbous nose dips downward and the big tiltrotor almost seems exhausted. Suddenly, like the bird whose name it bears, the Osprey plunges toward the river at terrifying speed. It does a ghastly belly flop onto the surface. A geyser of water sprays sky-ward. When the splash subsides, Aircraft 4 is simply gone.

  * * *

  A half hour or so later, the King Air chase plane neared the Marine base, having stopped in Charlotte to refuel. Grady Wilson was piloting, so Tom Macdonald radioed the Quantico tower to ask for landing instructions. The King Air couldn’t land there today, the tower replied. Macdonald explained that they were part of the Osprey test team. “Stand by,” the tower came back. “Orbit while we check that.” As they waited, Macdonald and Wilson could hear the tower directing a search-and-rescue helicopter. Then the operator asked Macdonald and Wilson what color flight suits Boeing pilots wore.

  “Oh, God, I know what that is,” Wilson said.

  About ten minutes later, after confirming there had been an accident at the field, the tower gave Wilson and Macdonald permission to land.

  “You know what’s happened,” Wilson said as he began their approach. “This is not going to be pretty. Stay with me on the controls, because my knees are shaking so, I don’t know whether I can get this thing down or not.”

  As they descended over the Potomac, they could see boats in the water and a helicopter hovering over the river. After taxiing to a stop, Wilson asked Macdonald to shut down the aircraft, then rushed to the back and opened the King Air’s ramp. Ken Lunn, the head of Osprey flight-testing for Boeing, met him there. Lunn asked if they knew what had happened.

  “You son of a bitches killed them, didn’t you?” Wilson snarled. Then he walked away, over to the airfield fence, sat down on the ground, and wept.

  When Macdonald got off the King Air, Lunn spoke to him, too. “I’ve got terrible news,” Lunn said. “Ship Four has crashed out there in the Potomac. We’re looking for survivors now.”

  * * *

  Michelle Stecyk was driving up Interstate 85 near Greenville, South Carolina, that afternoon, listening to music on cassette tapes while two-year-old Little Anthony slept in his baby chair on the backseat. She was following her mother and their family friend, Buddy, who were driving Tony Stecyk’s pickup truck and pulling his trailer full of Harleys. They had been on the road since an hour or so after Michelle dropped Tony at Eglin Air Force Base that morning, but they had stopped a few miles back for gas, so Michelle was surprised when her mother put on a turn signal to exit the interstate. What the heck could they be stopping for? Michelle wondered. When the pickup stopped on the roadside near a gas station, Michelle stepped out into the summer heat and started walking toward it. Her mother got out of the driver’s side, walked to Michelle, and grabbed her arms. Michelle was surprised to see tears in her mother’s eyes.

  “Missy,” her mother said. “We’ve been listening to the radio. They just said the V-22 ‘plummeted into the Potomac River and there are no survivors.’ ”

  Michelle dropped to her knees.

  * * *

  Colonel Jim Schaefer had a mobile phone in his car. It rang that afternoon as he was driving through the gate at Quantico with his wife and the two civilian guests they’d invited to see the Osprey arrive. A member of Schaefer’s team at Navair was on the line.

  “It’s down. It’s down,” he said.

  “It’s not going to get here for another hour and a half,” Schaefer replied.

  “You don’t understand. It’s down.”

  Schaefer thought he meant the Osprey was grounded in Charlotte for some mechanical reason. “Okay,” Schaefer said, and hung up.

  The phone rang again.

  “You don’t understand,” the Navair employee said. “It’s down in the river.”

  “What river?”

  “The Potomac.”

  “It’s not supposed to be here for another two hours or something.”

  “It got here early.”

  “Shit.”

  Schaefer drove to the Quantico air station gate, got out, and told his wife to take their guests home. Then he asked HMX-1’s commander to temporarily take charge of the accident investigation. Major Dodge had started a rescue and recovery effort the moment Aircraft 4 went down. His first act was to seize the Boeing employee’s videotape of the crash as evidence. The officers went to the air station headquarters to coordinate things. Soon, reporters and TV vans from various stations were crowding the chain link fence around the air station. Schaefer called the security detail and gave orders not to let the media inside: “Make sure that without proper military ID, no one gets through that gate. I don’t care if it’s goddamn Sam Donaldson.”

  Fishermen from the town of Quantico were on the river by now, looking for the Osprey’s crew. Dodge was trying to contact Navy divers, find a salvage company to raise Aircraft 4 from the water, attend to dozens of details. He was keeping notes in the same green logbook he’d used to plan the tests the MOTT had hoped to do with Aircraft 4, only now, his handwriting was shaky.

  * * *

  The next day, Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams told reporters the crash raised “serious questions about the V-22 program.” It was going to “significantly complicate our ability to proceed” with the compromise Cheney had offered Congress less than three weeks earlier, Williams said, “until we know more about what happened.”

  That evening, Curt Weldon and Pete Geren went to the floor of the House of Representatives to makes speeches about the tragedy. They expressed their condolences to the families of those killed. They also urged their colleagues in Congress not to “rush to judgment,” as Geren put it. The Marines still “desperately” needed the Osprey, Geren said. “But we must look beyond that and show some vision in assessing the importance of this aircraft. The civilian applications are as broad as the imagination.” Weldon noted that “in the last three years alone we have had nine accidents with the existing medium lift aircraft for the Marine Corps, most recently in March, where fourteen young Marines were killed when the CH-46 helicopter they were flying in went down.”

  As Geren had told the Washington Post earlier that day, Aircraft 4’s crash came at an awkward time politically. “We’re in the middle of trying to put together a compromise” with Cheney, Geren said, “and it’s a fragile compromise.”

  Fellow Texas Democrat representative Charlie Wilson later offered Geren some solace. Crashes were nothing new in aviation, Wilson reminded him, especially military aviation. “If we canceled every program that crashed,” Wilson told Geren, “Saddam Hussein would be drinking champagne in Riyadh today.”

  * * *

  Navy scuba divers found Aircraft 4 lying twenty-seven feet below the surface of the river, mired in th
ree feet of silt, the day after the crash. The left side windows of the cockpit were broken out, and the divers found Pat Sullivan still strapped into his seat. They released his harness and brought Sullivan’s body to the surface. The other six crew members couldn’t be found that day.

  At 6:30 a.m. Wednesday, two days after the crash, two crabbers in a boat found Master Gunnery Sergeant Gary Leader’s body floating on the Potomac two miles south of where Aircraft 4 went down. An hour and a half later, crabbers found flight test engineer Bob Rayburn’s body floating nearby. Gunnery Sergeant Sean Joyce’s body was found a mile farther upstream a couple of hours later. That afternoon, divers found the body of Major Brian James on the river bottom, still strapped into his seat but thrown fifteen feet forward of Aircraft 4’s wreckage. An hour later, a search-and-rescue helicopter crew spotted Tony Stecyk’s body floating a mile south of the crash site. On Thursday, as a salvage crew used a hoist line to raise part of Aircraft 4’s wing out of the river, Jerry Mayan’s body floated to the surface.

  A Naval Court of Inquiry concluded that Aircraft 4 was falling at a rate of 6,300 feet per minute when it hit the water, impacting with seventy-nine times the force of gravity. The court said the impact was “well beyond the structural capabilities of the fuselage or human endurance.” Jim Schaefer never forgot seeing coins found in the pockets of some of Aircraft 4’s crew. They were bent.

  * * *

  On July 31, Boeing Helicopter Company held a memorial service for the crew of Aircraft 4 on the flight ramp at its Ridley Park plant. Several hundred Boeing Helicopter employees and officials from Boeing, Bell, Navair, and the Marine Corps attended. No media were allowed to cover the event.

  By then, all seven of the crew had been buried. They left six widows and thirteen children. Yvonne Joyce lost both her husband, Sean Joyce, and her brother, Gary Leader. Sandy Knott, the Boeing secretary who had accepted Sullivan’s marriage proposal two days before his last flight, had expected to be on her honeymoon that Friday evening.

  Kathi Mayan, engineer Jerry Mayan’s wife, didn’t want to attend Boeing’s memorial service. She was bitter. She couldn’t get out of her mind how Jerry had told her he didn’t want to make the flight but his bosses were pressuring him to go. Relatives talked Kathi into going to the service, but she was in a daze. She hardly noticed as eulogies were read, a Boeing employee sang “Amazing Grace,” and a lone Marine Corps bugler at one end of the airfield played taps. Each of the children left by Aircraft 4’s crew was given a $10,000 savings bond, bought with personal contributions from Boeing employees.