Michelle Stecyk buried her husband Tony at Edgewood Memorial Park in Delaware County under a bronze marker decorated with two etchings: the Harley-Davidson logo and a V-22 Osprey, shown with its nacelles pointing toward heaven. For about two years after the crash, Little Anthony often asked his mother whether it was Friday. “Daddy said we’re picking him up on Friday,” the little boy would remind her.
* * *
Eleven days before the 1992 presidential election, on October 23, 1992, Boeing held another ceremony on the flight ramp at Ridley Park. Shortly before noon that crisp autumn Friday, a motorcade pulled through one of the gates of the plant on Pennsylvania Highway 291, which runs through the facility. Outside the property, protesters waving anti-Republican placards lined the highway. They knew Vice President Dan Quayle was riding in one of the cars, accompanied by local congressman Curt Weldon, who had arranged for his fellow Republican’s visit. Inside the fence waited a couple of thousand Boeing workers, mostly United Auto Workers members. Many, Weldon knew, were as resentful as the anti-Republican protesters outside toward an administration that for four years had tried to kill the Osprey, and with it a lot of jobs at Ridley Park. Reluctantly, local UAW leaders had agreed to sit on a stage with Quayle as he delivered a speech because Weldon had been their ally on the Osprey—and because Quayle was coming with good news.
The vice president’s stop at Ridley Park was billed as “official business” but hardly could have been more political. Democratic presidential nominee Bill Clinton had led President Bush in the polls since July. Bush needed to win Pennsylvania to be reelected, Weldon kept telling the White House, and a show of support for the Osprey might get as many as ten thousand votes from Boeing workers and their relatives. Quayle was in Ridley Park to do that, though Cheney’s position on the Osprey hadn’t changed.
Cheney had offered only to fund some new Osprey prototypes while the Pentagon studied helicopter alternatives. Under his plan, the Air Force version of the Osprey would be dropped, and the Pentagon would decide later whether to build the tiltrotor for the Marines. Carrying that plan out fell to Sean O’Keefe, who as Pentagon comptroller for the past four years had been trying to kill the Osprey. O’Keefe was now acting Navy secretary, a post Cheney had gotten him named to after the incumbent resigned. Weldon and others in the Osprey camp were suspicious of O’Keefe, who had told a House Armed Services Committee hearing in August he wasn’t sure the Marines really needed an aircraft that could fly 2,100 miles unrefueled and cruise at 250 knots. O’Keefe said the Navy Department still intended to give Bell and Boeing a contract to build new Osprey prototypes “as fast as we possibly can,” but that would have to await the results of the investigation into the crash of Aircraft 4.
* * *
The Navy Department announced the preliminary results of the Aircraft 4 crash investigation in late September, laying the blame on “mechanical failure.” Analyses of wreckage pulled from the Potomac and data from the aircraft’s flight test instrumentation showed that the seed of the disaster was sown as Sullivan and James flew Aircraft 4 the two hours and forty-seven minutes it took to get from Eglin to Quantico. A Naval Court of Inquiry concluded that combustible fluid of some sort—exactly what fluid was later disputed—had been leaking inside the right nacelle as Aircraft 4 flew. Investigators said the fluid probably was oil from the right proprotor gearbox, leaking through a seal installed backward as mechanics were rushing to get Aircraft 4 ready to leave Eglin. As the prototype flew, the investigators concluded, the oil pooled in the bottom of the engine cowling. As long as the Osprey was flying like an airplane, nacelles horizontal, the oil just sat there. As Sullivan started tilting the nacelles upward to land like a helicopter at Quantico, though, the liquid poured into the engine’s red-hot interior. The extra fluid choked the air flow into the engine, which set the fluid on fire and burped it back out its nose. The flash fire burned through a wall dividing the engine from the upper part of the nacelle, which houses rotor components. The gulp of what in effect was extra fuel also caused the engine to surge, creating the first puff of dark smoke seen by witnesses on the ground.
As in nearly every aircraft disaster, this first malfunction set off a deadly chain reaction. The surge triggered a governor designed to prevent the Osprey’s engines from overspeeding. That disengaged the engines for a moment and flashed a flight control system caution light on the pilots’ cockpit display screens. “Let’s get a reset,” Sullivan had said when he saw the light, then he or James reset the computerized flight control system. This standard practice—a way to make sure the problem was real, not a false alarm caused by a computer error—caused a rapid power increase to both engines, overspeeding both. In a matter of seconds, the already-damaged right engine failed.
Theoretically, Aircraft 4 could have survived even then. One of the Osprey’s key survivability requirements was to be able to fly on one engine, a tricky task in a machine with two rotors driven by two engines separated by a wing nearly 46 feet long. As in Bell Helicopter’s XV-15, the solution was to link the Osprey’s rotors so one engine could turn both. This was accomplished by running an “interconnecting driveshaft” through the wing. Inside the nacelles, this connection had to turn a corner to reach the rotor, so there was another, shorter “pylon driveshaft” located above and parallel to each engine. To save weight, the pylon driveshaft had been made of composites, a tube of carbon wound with a skin of fiberglass and epoxy resin, materials that melt at 240 degrees Fahrenheit. The flash fire in Aircraft 4’s right nacelle hit an estimated 900 degrees, melting the pylon driveshaft enough that its torque twisted it into useless deformity. At that point, its link to the still-healthy left engine gone, Aircraft 4’s right rotor began to stop. The deformed pylon shaft, meanwhile, sliced through hydraulic and electric lines, causing the Osprey’s flight control computer to fail and freezing the nacelles at their final 58-degree angle. Aircraft 4 and its seven-member crew were doomed.
Many who studied the accident said it might not have happened if Aircraft 4 had landed in Charlotte as planned. By then, too little fluid might have pooled in the right nacelle’s cowling to start a fire when it drained into the engine. Many also said Pat Sullivan surely would have landed in Charlotte if he hadn’t felt pressured to get Aircraft 4 to Quantico so the generals could see it. The Naval Court of Inquiry concluded, “There was tremendous pressure on Mr. Sullivan to get the aircraft to Quantico at the proper time on Monday, 20 July.”
Boeing denied that management pressure was a factor. In a ground-breaking investigation of the crash published on November 14, 1993, however, reporter Nathan Gorenstein of the Philadelphia Inquirer cited contrary evidence in an “internal Boeing review of the company’s test flight operations” he had obtained. The review, Gorenstein reported, “concluded that the V-22 and other Boeing Helicopters test flight programs had a ‘high probability of safety being compromised due to budget and schedule pressures.’”
No one could ever know whether Aircraft 4’s crew would have lived had they landed in Charlotte or earlier, as the Court of Inquiry said Sullivan should have done when he got the “Return to Base—Rotor” warning. No one could know if it was pressure from his bosses that led Sullivan to fly on despite the safety risk. No one could prove that after the abuse it had taken in the McKinley lab, the Osprey simply wasn’t ready to fly that day, though the Naval Court of Inquiry found “various Boeing personnel made decisions which were not consistent with flight safety.” Nor could anyone prove, at least not to a jury’s satisfaction, that the fluid pooling in Aircraft 4’s engine cowling as it flew was oil from the improperly installed seal. In a case that lasted nearly a decade, Pat Sullivan’s two children from his first marriage and three of the widows—Michelle Stecyk, Kathi Mayan, and Bob Rayburn’s wife, Dorothy—sued Bell and the companies who made the Osprey’s engines, the oil seal, and related parts. The families’ lawyers argued that the companies were negligent in designing an oil seal that could be installed backward. Weary after years of
pretrial motions and delays, Michelle Stecyk and the Sullivan children took a settlement from the companies. Kathi Mayan and Dorothy Rayburn persisted and lost the case after a six-week jury trial. An expert witness for the companies, an MIT materials engineering professor, testified that in his opinion, leaking hydraulic fluid had caused the fire. The trial judge barred from evidence the fact that, after the crash, the companies designed a new oil seal that couldn’t be reversed. A federal appeals court upheld the verdict.
* * *
As the Court of Inquiry was taking testimony that summer and fall, Democrat Bill Clinton and his presidential running mate, Tennessee senator Al Gore, were using the Osprey as an issue against Bush and Quayle. Clinton and Gore said they would build the Osprey if elected because the tiltrotor was an example of “dual-use technology”—items that could be made for the military but converted to civilian use. Clinton endorsed the Osprey in an August speech in San Antonio. In September, Gore visited Bell Helicopter’s Plant 6 and said the tiltrotor could “revolutionize the air transport infrastructure for this country.” Clinton endorsed the Osprey again in a televised debate with Bush on October 11.
Eleven days after that debate, Navair gave Bell and Boeing a “letter contract”—precise terms to be settled later—to build four new Osprey prototypes and modify two of those built under the original Full Scale Development contract. The new Osprey program would be called Engineering and Manufacturing Development, newly adopted Pentagon jargon for what used to be called Full Scale Development.
In golf, a player who takes a second shot from the tee after flubbing the first is said to be “taking a mulligan.” In essence, the Pentagon was giving Bell and Boeing a mulligan on the Osprey. During the new EMD phase of the Osprey program—called “E, M, D” by insiders—Bell and Boeing would get a chance to redesign the Osprey to solve the FSD version’s major problems, starting with weight. Best of all for the companies, the EMD contract replaced the fixed-price FSD contract former Navy Secretary John Lehman had insisted on, which had cost Bell and Boeing—or saved the government, depending on your point of view— more than $300 million. Company executives were ecstatic.
The day after the EMD contract was awarded, Quayle paid his visit to Ridley Park to claim credit for a program the Bush administration had been trying to kill for four years. First he went to an indoor reception with Boeing executives and others. They gave him a gift the company’s public relations staff had thought up, and gotten some laughs doing it: a white baseball warm-up jacket with “Dan Quayle” stitched in red over the left breast and on the back, in large red letters: “V-22 Osprey.” The PR people loved the idea of the number-two man in an administration that had been trying to cancel the Osprey for years wearing a jacket advertising it. Quayle slipped the jacket on, smiling broadly, and went outside with Weldon and the executives to the flight ramp. They passed beneath a huge banner that read “V-22—America’s Airplane” and walked onto a stage equipped with a lectern and a model of the Osprey. Boeing employees waved American flags and cheered as Weldon spoke, telling them, “I told you this day would come. And it’s here!” Quayle followed, getting polite applause. “I am proud to announce a $1.4 billion contract to develop the V-22 aircraft, America’s airplane,” Quayle declared, beaming enthusiasm. A big replica of a check for $550 million—the first year’s funding—was propped up on an easel nearby.
After Quayle left, the general manager of Boeing Helicopter, Ed Renouard, phoned Colonel Jim Schaefer to tell him about the visit. “You wouldn’t believe it,” Renouard said. “He put on our jacket and did a big old Rocky/Stallone ‘yeahhhh’ type thing.”
After talking to Renouard, Schaefer convened a conference call with some of the Osprey program’s top managers at Navair. “Guys,” Schaefer said, “we’re back in.”
Dick Spivey, who was in Fort Worth that day, wasn’t so sure. Spivey wanted to believe the struggle with Cheney was over, that the Osprey was now politically secure after the bitter four-year political battle he’d helped wage. When he saw a photo of Quayle in his V-22 Osprey jacket, though, acting as if “we just came up with a great idea,” Spivey could only shake his head. How smoothly politicians could do U-turns. If it was that easy, what would keep Bush and Quayle from doing another U-turn if they were reelected?
Spivey had voted Republican all his life, partly because the Republicans spent more on defense. That was good for Bell Helicopter. This year, though, Spivey felt he had no choice. He voted for the Democrat, Clinton, who said he would build the Osprey. When Clinton won, Spivey felt like he was in hog heaven. His dream was alive.
CHAPTER NINE
ANOTHER PERIOD OF DARKNESS
The sun was bright and the sky clear over Washington on Wednesday, September 8, 1999—perfect weather for watching a dream come true. Dick Spivey stood on a stone terrace outside the Pentagon’s River Entrance that morning, looking over a grassy parade ground below and the Potomac River beyond. In less than three months, Spivey would turn fifty-nine; what remained of his once-red hair was now gray. Today, though, he felt like a kid on Christmas morning. Several hundred people were on the terrace, mostly U.S. military officers and Pentagon bureaucrats, but Spivey saw a sprinkling of foreign military uniforms as well. Lots of Marines were there, along with senior executives from Boeing Helicopter Company, Bell Helicopter, and Bell’s corporate parent, Textron. Company public relations people were circulating among a gaggle of reporters and TV photographers. Spivey couldn’t wait to see the looks on their faces when the show they were waiting for began.
More than a quarter century after he had started selling it, nearly eighteen years after the Marine Corps had caught his fever for it, a decade after former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney had started trying to kill it, and seven years after the terrible crash at Quantico, Dick Spivey was sure the dream he’d devoted his life to was finally becoming reality. Today people would see, as Spivey had believed for nearly forty years, that the Holy Grail of aviation—a machine offering full freedom of flight—had been found, and that it was the tiltrotor. The Marines were just as certain that, after years of waiting and fighting, they were finally getting their dream machine, the V-22 Osprey. That was why General James L. Jones, Jr., the commandant of the Marine Corps, had decided to hold today’s event, Tiltrotor Technology Day at the Pentagon. It would begin with a little air show.
Spivey was going to enjoy the show, but he was there mainly to tell anyone who would listen about Bell’s newest tiltrotor vision. Tents and booths were set up on the parade ground for contractors to display tiltrotor-related wares and other Marine Corps equipment. Spivey would be at Bell’s display all day, talking up an idea called the Quad TiltRotor. He and three Bell engineers were applying for a patent on the concept: a tiltrotor more than twice the Osprey’s size—so big it would need two wings and four rotors. The QTR, as Bell called it, would be large enough to carry ninety troops or 40,000 pounds of cargo—four times the advertised payload of the Osprey. It would be designed to fly as far as 2,000 miles and set down on a scrap of ground most anywhere in the world. It would be a dream machine most any military commander would want. Spivey had briefed General Jones on the QTR a couple of months before and the commandant was sold on the idea. It had been an easy sell. Jones had visited Fort Worth in 1997 and flown in the XV-15, the little tiltrotor demonstrator Bell had built for NASA in the 1970s and used as a potent marketing tool since the 1981 Paris Air Show. Jones loved it. He wasn’t a pilot, but he was already talking about building a tiltrotor gunship the XV-15’s size to go with the Osprey and the QTR. With a “family” of three different-sized tiltrotors, Jones figured, the Marines could replace all their helicopters. That was one reason Jones had arranged today’s event.
The show formally kicked off at 9:15 a.m., when a military band on the terrace struck up a patriotic tune and Secretary of Defense William Cohen came out of the Pentagon to join the crowd. Soon a CH-46 Sea Knight, the tandem-rotor helicopter the Marines had wanted the Osprey to replace for
years, came circling in and landed on the parade ground. Next came the XV-15. Then the star of the show arrived.
After flying past the Washington Monument, the first production model Osprey ever built came into view, rotors tilted up like a helicopter. The pilots were Marine Lieutenant Colonel Keith M. Sweaney and Air Force Lieutenant Colonel James Shaffer, the current leaders of the special unit formed in 1990 to test the Osprey, the Multiservice Operational Test Team, or MOTT. In the back cabin were Commandant Jones, Representative Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania, and a half dozen other members of Congress who had helped the Marines keep the Osprey alive. As a reward, the lawmakers had just gotten their first Osprey ride.
Shaffer and Sweaney exchanged grins and a thumbs-up as they brought the new Osprey in over a small stand of trees between the river and the parade ground and their rotor downwash only blew a few leaves and branches down. There was one less tree in the stand now than there had been before 8:20 a.m., when the pilots had flown in to pick up their VIP passengers. As Shaffer and Sweaney crossed over the trees that time, the hurricane-force downwash of the Osprey’s massive proprotors knocked over a small oak, its roots probably loosened by torrential rains the night before. This is going to be one of those days, Shaffer thought as he saw the tree topple. Critics had always said the Osprey’s downwash might make it unsuitable as a rescue aircraft at sea, maybe even unsafe for ground crews to hook cargo to as it hovered over them. Shaffer could only imagine what the critics would say when they heard he and Sweaney had felled an oak with their Osprey. To his relief and amazement, though, a crew of groundskeepers had swarmed out of the Pentagon within minutes, chopped up the tree, and thrown its remains into a van that appeared out of nowhere. By the time the commandant and his lawmaker guests had crossed the parade ground to board the Osprey, the evidence was gone. Even the hole the oak left in the earth was filled with fresh mulch. The reporters and guests hadn’t gathered on the terrace by then, and the tree had stood on the opposite side of the grove from the parade ground. Even Spivey, who had been there at the time, hadn’t noticed when the tree fell.
The Dream Machine Page 31
