Bianca gave the Osprey pilots their mission briefing in a classroom inside the MAWTS-1 headquarters building at Yuma. As he finished, he reminded the pilots that in case of a mishap, the senior officer among them would be the “on-scene commander,” responsible for coordinating the emergency response from the air. Tonight, Bianca noted, that would be Major Mike Westman, call sign “Pygmy,” flying the second section’s lead Osprey. When Bianca said that, Westman looked over at Brow, his oldest friend in the MOTT. At thirty-nine, Brow was often the most senior officer on a mission, but he had gotten his wings in 1986, two years after Westman. Brow flashed Westman a little grin, as if to say, “You get it tonight.” Westman never forgot that grin.
The pilots were in their cockpits and the rotors were turning as the crew chiefs for the first two Ospreys waved toward the hangar for the Marine infantry to board. Carrying packs and weapons, the thirty-three Marines ran out to the rear ramps of the Ospreys at a 45-degree angle to avoid the powerful downwash. “Keep the barrel of your weapon down,” Staff Sergeant Julius Banks, one of the crew chiefs in the lead Osprey, shouted into each Marine’s ear as he boarded. There were eighteen Marines in his Osprey, less than capacity, but their packs filled the aisle, so the crew chiefs wouldn’t be able to walk up and down the cabin during the flight. Banks stationed himself next to the clamshell rear ramp doors, leaving the top door open. Sergeant Michael Moffitt and MAWTS-1 instructor Sharp, the other crew chiefs on the lead Osprey, would ride up front by the crew cabin door on the right side of the aircraft. All three crew chiefs would wear night-vision goggles and spend most of their time looking outside the plane to help the pilots keep track of the other Ospreys and avoid any other aircraft they flew near.
The sun was just setting and the evening sky was pink when they took off, rolling down the runway a few yards, then leaping into the air and climbing fast. Some of the Marine passengers gave Moffitt a thumbs-up when they felt the Osprey’s power, but soon it was dark inside the cabin and most of the infantry dozed off. Fifteen minutes after takeoff, the air crews put on their night-vision goggles. The sky was clear, the only clouds several thousand feet above, but around and below them it was dark. Only a sliver of a crescent moon and the lights of an occasional car, small town, or trailer park lit the barren desert below.
Both sections of Ospreys had begun their gradual descent toward Marana by 7:50 P.M., when the pilot of an F-18 fighter radioed that Landing Zone Swan, their designation for the airport, was “winter”—code for “cold,” meaning “no enemy in sight.” There would be no need to fly around simulated antiaircraft batteries or “hostile forces” that might “shoot” at the Ospreys. The first section would just need to hit their various checkpoints on time and land at the airfield. They were already down to 5,000 feet above sea level—3,000 feet above ground level, or “AGL”— when the F-18 radioed. The next checkpoint would be at 1,000 feet AGL, the one after that at 500. The last checkpoint, 300 feet above the ground, would come five miles from the airfield. This “Initial Point”—designated “IP Dodge”—was where Wright and Brow should start tilting the rotors of their lead-section Ospreys to helicopter mode to land. If their timing was right, the approach should be uncomplicated.
It wasn’t.
* * *
“What the hell are those guys doing up there?” the lead pilot of the second section of Ospreys, Westman, asks his copilot, Major Jim Schafer, as they go into their holding pattern. Westman and Schafer, with Majors Murphy and Rock piloting the Osprey behind them, have been trailing the first section by two miles or so since they left Yuma. Now West-man’s section is beginning to circle at 3,000 feet above sea level, 1,000 feet AGL. Wright and Brow should have been down to the same altitude some time ago, but there they are in the distance, still a couple of thousand feet higher. Westman is puzzled by this. By rights, he or one of the other pilots in his section could radio Wright and Bianca to ask why they’re so high, but maybe they have a good reason, so no one does. Wright and Bianca are the mission leaders.
Wright and Bianca are also distracted. Midway through the flight, one of their two mission computers has gone out, prompting a discussion between them and the other pilots in their section, Brow and Gruber, on whether to reboot it. If they do, their cockpit displays will go blank for ten seconds or so as the two mission computers synchronize their data. During that time, Wright and Bianca will have to fly with a “black cockpit”—no primary instrument displays of their speed, altitude, fuel, engine performance, etc.—and no digital map. They decide to reboot the computer when they get on the ground.
Soon after this, less than a minute after the F-18 radios that LZ Swan is cold, there are more distractions. As Bianca and the leader of the troops in the back discuss how long their Osprey will need to stay on the ground at Marana, Bianca drops something in the darkened cockpit.
“Sergeant Moffitt, could you look underneath my chair for a paper that just fell off?” Bianca asks the crew chief, who is stationed just behind the cockpit.
“Yes, sir,” Moffitt replies. As Moffitt leans into the cockpit and begins looking for the paper, Wright asks Bianca, “Whe—when do I come down to three thousand?”
“We should still be c—you should be coming down to three thousand,” Bianca says. “I should have told you that earlier.”
While Bianca has been talking with the F-18 pilot on the radio and over the intercom with the troop commander, Wright has flown past their 3,000-foot checkpoint. Now, to get to IP Dodge at 300 feet, where they should start converting their rotors to helicopter mode for landing, they are going to have to come down faster than planned. Otherwise, they might overshoot the airfield and have to “wave off ”—fly around—to try their approach again, which will upset the mission timing. Wright puts their Osprey into a steep descent. Soon they are coming down at 1,860 feet per minute, though in airplane mode, the ride is smooth. The unannounced maneuver seems to catch Brow and Gruber in the Osprey behind them off guard, though neither says anything over the radio. Trying to follow, as a wingman should, Brow descends faster than Wright. Soon Brow’s Osprey, Dash Two, is coming down at 1,965 feet a minute.
Twelve seconds into their descent, Moffitt is still looking for Bianca’s dropped paper. “I don’t see it,” the sergeant says.
“Shit,” Bianca mutters.
“Got a flashlight up there, sir?” Moffitt asks.
“I sure don’t,” Bianca replies. With a map in his lap, Bianca feels around and finds the paper himself. “Stand by, I got it,” he tells Moffitt.
“All right,” Moffitt says.
“Thanks, it didn’t drop all the way down,” Bianca tells him.
Bianca turns his attention back to their approach into Marana. “We want to be at IP Dodge at 1957 and we’re just about there,” he tells Wright. “We’re looking pretty good.” Over the radio, Bianca reminds Gruber to contact the Marana airport on the Common Traffic Advisory Frequency.
“I’m there now,” Gruber replies.
A few seconds later, Bianca offers Wright more help. “You wanna cross the IP at, uh, 1957,” Bianca says. “That’s thirty seconds away and we’re kinda at the IP already, so you can slow her down a bit, a hundred seventy, and turn towards the, uh, slow-down point.”
Seventeen seconds later, Bianca talks to Wright again. “You wanna cross the slow-down point . . . ,” he begins.
“Where’s that?” Wright asks.
“Good to go, continue,” Bianca replies, then adds: “Lefty, you okay, man?”
“Yup,” Wright responds.
“You got it, you got it,” Bianca tells him. “That’s a good heading right there. You wanna take some airspeed out.”
As Wright turns the Osprey in a sweeping descent toward the airfield, Staff Sergeant Julius Banks is looking out the open upper half of the rear ramp’s clamshell doors. The ride feels normal to Banks. To Moffitt, the other crew chief, it doesn’t feel dramatic at all compared to the quick turns and dives at low level he’s experienced at Y
uma riding in an Osprey evading an F-5 fighter jet. As Moffitt peers past the pilots out the windshield, though, he can see they are going to be coming in “high and hot,” as aviators call it.
A minute into the descent, they cross IP Dodge, the point two miles short of the Marana runway where they’re to convert to helicopter mode for landing. The flight plan said they should be at 300 feet by now. They are at 1,900, more than six times too high. Wright starts tilting his rotors upward. Eleven seconds later, Brow follows suit in the second Osprey. “Dash Two’s looking good on the right side,” crew chief Banks reports.
Brow’s challenge now is to keep from passing Wright. As Brow’s rotors tilt upward, his Osprey “balloons,” rising like a skier hitting the end of a jump, and climbs back up to 1,350 feet. Now Brow needs to lose that much more altitude to land. As the rotors of both Ospreys angle upward, both lose forward airspeed. Their proprotors are becoming more rotor than propeller, no longer thrusting horizontally but at an angle. The Ospreys’ wings are losing lift. Within seconds, Brow’s Osprey drops more than 500 feet. With 820 feet remaining between his aircraft and the ground, Brow is coming down at 3,945 feet per minute, and though still traveling at 101 knots, about 115 miles an hour, it is losing forward speed rapidly. The crew chiefs of both Ospreys open their right-side cabin doors, preparing to land.
Bianca asks Wright if he can see the ground.
“Yup,” Wright replies.
“Okay, you want me to turn on the searchlight?” Bianca asks.
Wright doesn’t reply.
“You got your buildings in sight, you got your landing area in sight, here comes the gear,” Bianca says as he lowers the landing gear. “Gear’s coming . . . and you’re gonna have to take some airspeed out . . . um . . . there’s our buildings to the left, there’s our landing area right underneath the nose.”
By now, both Ospreys are fully converted to helicopter mode—and on the verge of overshooting the airfield. A tailwind blowing 8 knots or more has been pushing them toward the field even as they cut their speed. “We’re kinda high at this point, we’re at four hundred feet,” Bianca warns Wright.
“I can’t even get her to come down,” Wright says. His Osprey has slowed to 60 knots and lost 600 feet of altitude in the past seventeen seconds, but with the tailwind, they still aren’t coming down fast enough to hit their intended landing zone.
“Okay, if it’s not sweet, we can go long if you need to, or you can wave off, ” Bianca tells Wright. “It’s your call.”
Wright tilts his Osprey’s nacelles nearly as far aft as they will go, to 95 degrees, directing their thrust forward like air brakes. They are still at 300 feet. Behind them, still trying to keep from passing Wright, Brow has stopped his Osprey’s rapid descent for a moment by adding power and ballooning again as his nacelles hit 90 degrees, full helicopter mode, 566 feet above the ground. Now Brow tilts his rotors all the way back, too. Crew chief Banks watches out the back of Wright’s Osprey as Brow’s crosses from left to right about 200 feet behind them and pulls up nearly even on their right side.
“We’re hanging Dash Two out,” Bianca cautions Wright.
Moffitt is looking toward the airfield out the door on the right side of the Osprey when crew chief instructor Sharp taps him on the shoulder and points a finger up. Moffitt sees Brow’s Osprey, now even with Wright’s but a hundred feet or more higher.
“Dash Two’s three o’clock high,” Moffitt reports to the pilots.
“Roger,” Bianca acknowledges.
“He’s getting back into position,” Moffitt adds.
Now both Ospreys are slowing rapidly and coming down fast. At 250 feet, Wright’s forward speed is 30 knots. His descent rate is 1,050 feet per minute and increasing. Brow is about 90 feet higher but flying faster, 48 knots, and losing altitude more than twice as fast as Wright, at 2,247 feet per minute.
No one will ever be able to ask Brow why, a few seconds later, he pushes his thrust control lever forward two and a half inches to add power, moves his control stick an inch and a half to the right, and depresses his right rudder pedal a touch, pulling his Osprey’s nose to the right. At the time, he is flying forward at less than 40 knots and hurtling toward the ground at 2,050 feet per minute, rotors tilted as far back as they will go. Most likely, Brow is adding power to slow his descent and reposition his aircraft to avoid overtaking Wright. Maybe he is preparing to wave off and fly around. Neither Brow, nor his copilot, Gruber, says a word over the radio at the time. Whatever Brow’s intention, his Osprey suddenly rolls hard to the right. Brow shoves the thrust control lever to full power and jerks the control stick all the way left, desperately trying to counter the roll. His Osprey snaps farther right instead.
Watching from the side door of Wright’s Osprey, at first crew chief Moffitt thinks Brow is making a hard right-hand turn. A split second later, peering beneath his night-vision goggles, Moffitt watches, dumb-founded, as Brow’s Osprey noses over, turns its belly skyward, and plummets into the sand next to the runway. As it hits, Moffitt hears a loud crunch and the sound of glass shattering. He sees the Osprey explode. He feels a wave of heat hit his face. A cloud of black smoke and fire mushroom into the night sky. The concussion blows Moffitt back from the cabin door.
Banks, watching out the open rear ramp door, is surprised when his night-vision goggles go black, their light sensors washed out by the flash of the explosion. He sees bursts of orange to the sides of his goggles.
Bianca catches a flash of orange out of the corner of his right eye. He looks out his right window, at first thinking the nacelle on that side has caught fire. That’s when Bianca sees the fireball behind them.
“Oh, my God, they went down, they crashed!” Moffitt says over the intercom, a note of vacant awe in his voice. “Oh, my God, wave off left!” Moffitt then cries, coming to his senses as the Osprey he’s in begins to drop abruptly. “Power! Wave off! Wave it off! POWER!” Moffitt screams.
Crew chief Banks joins Moffitt’s cry. “Wave off, wave off, wave off,” Banks repeats, his voice rising with each repetition.
“Wave off,” Moffitt urges again.
“Wave off, WAVE OFF, WAVE OFF!” Banks choruses.
Screw this, I’m flying now! Bianca thinks, grabbing his set of controls. He and Wright both shove their thrust control levers forward to full power and tilt the Osprey’s nacelles down to 65 degrees, trying to pick up speed and fly around. The maneuver doesn’t work. They have slowed to less than 10 knots, and their Osprey’s wings can’t generate enough lift to keep them airborne. Two seconds later, the Osprey touches down on the runway, bounces back into the air a few dozen feet, then comes down again.
Banks falls out of a seat he had taken as he felt the aircraft dropping. Moffitt is knocked to his knees. He hears the Osprey’s tires squeal.
“That’s it, pull it back, you got it, Lefty!” Bianca shouts as they try to slow the Osprey. Bianca and Wright cut all power to the rotors. Still on his knees, Moffitt sticks his head out the door as they skid down the asphalt landing strip. He smells burning rubber. He sees a drainage ditch ahead.
“We’re gonna hit hard!” Bianca warns amid a cacophony of shouts. Bianca sees the ditch, too. He fears the three-foot trench will shear the Osprey’s nosewheels off.
“Shutdown!” Moffitt screams to the pilots as the Osprey slides toward the ditch.
“They’re off, they’re off,” Bianca replies.
“Shutdown!” Moffitt repeats.
“They’re off!” Bianca yells back as the Osprey keeps rolling.
Moffitt jerks his head back inside, sits on the floor with his back to the fuselage, and braces for the crack-up he is sure is coming. Instead they bounce across the ditch and screech to a halt on a taxiway beyond.
“Get the grunts off the plane!” Bianca yells as the Osprey shudders to a stop. “Get ’em off!”
Banks lowers the bottom door of the rear ramp. Black smoke wafts in. We’re on fire, Banks thinks. He turns and starts grabbing Marines on
e by one, nearly ripping them out of their seats and throwing them toward the ramp. “Get the fuck out! Get the fuck out!” he shrieks. The troops start rushing out of the Osprey. Some wonder if the explosion was planned, a part of their mock mission.
“Get ’em off!” Bianca yells again as the grunts scramble down the rear ramp.
“Get ’em off,” pilot Wright joins in.
“GET ’EM OFF!!!” Bianca screams again. “Get out, Lefty, we got it!”
Over the radio, the pilots of the two Ospreys still circling above hear the commotion on the ground. “Hey, Pyg, did you hear that?” Major Mike Murphy asks Major Mike Westman.
Bianca gets on the radio. “CRASH—CRASH, CRASH, CRASH!!!” he screams.
“Is that for real?” another pilot somewhere above asks.
“CRASH, CRASH, CRASH, IT’S REAL, THERE’S AN AIRPLANE ON THE GROUND!” Bianca screeches, then yells at Wright: “GET OUT, LEFTY, WE GOT IT!”
Wright jumps out of the cockpit and joins the troops on the runway behind his Osprey. At the other end of the airfield, a bright fire is burning, the source of the black smoke that made crew chief Banks think his Osprey was on fire. With the last of the infantry safely away, Banks runs out the rear ramp and stops. He takes a step toward the flames, then feels a hand grab his shoulder from behind. “Hey,” crew chief instructor Sharp tells Banks somberly, “it’s over.”
With Wright out of the cockpit, Bianca takes a deep breath, then calmly reports over the radio: “This is Nighthawk Seven One. I am safe on deck and shut down. My Dash Two aircraft is on the ground.” He shuts the Osprey down, exits the cockpit, and joins the others at the rear.
Wright borrows Banks’s cell phone and starts making calls to Yuma. Bianca grabs a radioman from among the infantry. “You work for me now,” Bianca tells him. Bianca has the Marine kneel so he can use the radio the grunt carries on his back. They feel the heat from the fire on their faces. A fire truck is already on the scene, but every now and then, oxygen bottles, antimissile flares, or some other volatile equipment on the crashed Osprey cooks off and explodes with a “pop!” The crew chiefs stand on the runway in shock, wondering how things could have gone so wrong so quickly.
The Dream Machine Page 35
