“Home” was one of the portable, air-conditioned shelters with white metal sides, linoleum floors, and bunk beds where Marines and other service members and civilians lived at Al Asad, a major supply hub for U.S. forces in Iraq. Some called it “Camp Cupcake” because of its amenities, though nearly everything on the base was concrete or its basic ingredients, sand and rock. Al Asad had one of the largest and reputedly best dining halls in Iraq. It had a Burger King and several other fast-food restaurants, a gourmet coffee shop, and a post exchange selling everything from chewing gum to big-screen TVs. All of those conveniences, though, were located so far from VMM-263’s location that many in the squadron bought bicycles to get back and forth to them, and few pilots bothered to make the trip very often. They ate near their hangar, where a small building had been converted into a rough-hewn mess hall, dubbed “Skinny’s” for its limited fare. When the pilots were off duty, most simply went back to their “cans” and rested or slept.
Despite the lack of combat, they were flying their Ospreys a lot, carrying supplies and Marines and other passengers from Al Asad to remote “forward operating bases,” to Baghdad, and to other parts of Iraq. The Osprey quickly became a favorite way to fly for generals and other VIPs. Like a lot of other passengers, they liked its speed and relative comfort compared to helicopters, whose ride is sluggish and tooth-jarring by comparison. VMM-263 ended up carrying 18,000 passengers and 1.4 million pounds of cargo during its seven months in Iraq—respectable numbers. For many of the pilots, though, the routine of “hauling ass and trash,” as they called it, was a disappointment. They had come to Iraq expecting to fly in combat. Those who had done that already were happy not to repeat the experience, but those who hadn’t had been looking forward to seeing how they would handle it.
The worst time for many of the pilots was December, when VMM-263 was assigned to keep three of its Ospreys on call around the clock to evacuate casualties should there be any. Pilots on “casevac” duty had to spend twelve hours at a time in or near the ready room, a rectangular space the size of a modest backyard swimming pool. Maps of Iraq showing geographic features and flight paths, as well as a dartboard, adorned three of the ready room’s white walls. There was a table with a coffee pot near the door and a basket overflowing with cookies and candy sent constantly by concerned citizens back home. There was a refrigerator stocked with plastic bottles of water and nonalcoholic beer. In one corner was a plywood booth with a raised floor and a counter, painted black, where a miniature of the lady’s-leg lamp seen in the movie A Christmas Story sat. One pilot serving as operations duty officer, or ODO, was posted in the booth at all times, keeping track of where the squadron’s Ospreys were, monitoring radio traffic, answering calls from VMM-263 pilots wanting information. A whiteboard on the wall listed who was flying or would fly which Osprey on what mission and when. On a small shelf in the corner, above the ODO’s head, sat the squadron’s mascot, the “Ready Ape,” a comical, dark wood statue of a gorilla about a foot and a half tall and, depending on the occasion, garbed in a variety of tiny Marine Corps uniforms. The bulletin board with the photo of VMM-263’s message to Mark Thompson was on another wall nearby.
The center of the room was filled by two leather sofas, positioned in a V atop an oriental rug, with a coffee table in front of them. Beyond that were fifteen black office chairs where pilots and crew chiefs could sit for preflight and other briefings. Briefing slides could be shown on a big flat screen mounted on a pedestal situated in a corner in front of the chairs. Dressed in desert tan flight suits and carrying sidearms in brown leather holsters hanging from straps over their shoulders, the pilots sometimes passed the time while on alert for casualty evacuation by using the screen to watch movies on DVD. A favorite was Superbad, a comedy about three socially inept teenagers trying to get drunk and lose their virginity on the same night. The pilots on casevac alert, however, more often used the time to study their flight manuals and quiz each other on the steps to take if a particular fault or warning light posted on the Osprey’s cockpit display during a flight.
When I visited Al Asad that December, none of the pilots had seen any evidence as yet of hostile fire aimed at their Ospreys. Rock observed that there was no way to be sure, but it was possible this was because of the way they were flying. In combat zones, helicopters generally fly low, which despite their noise improves their chances of flying past those who might shoot at them before being seen. VMM-263’s pilots would execute a short or vertical takeoff, then quickly tilt the Osprey’s rotors forward to fly like an airplane. They would climb fast and then cruise at 8,000 feet or more and about 275 miles per hour, roughly twice as fast as most military helicopters, and well out of the range of small arms. When landing, they would spiral down in airplane mode and tilt their rotors up late in their approach to land like a helicopter.
This is how Captain Newel Bartlett flies, with Rock in the left-hand copilot’s seat and me in the jump seat between and just behind them, on a Sunday morning flight from Al Asad to a dusty and remote Marine forward operating base near the Syrian border called Korean Village. After taking off vertically at 10 a.m. from the flight line just outside VMM-263’s hangar, Bartlett follows another Osprey, circling over a desert firing range in helicopter mode. Pushing a button on his Thrust Control Lever, Bartlett fires off some flares to test the Osprey’s antimissile defenses. The flares crackle into the sky behind us, then one of the crew chiefs in back fires a few rounds from the machine gun mounted on the rear ramp. We circle back and land at the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing’s headquarters, a point called “LZ Ripper,” so the lead Osprey can pick up passengers including a general on his way to inspect Korean Village. As we wait, Rock quizzes Bartlett on the rules of engagement for firing at suspected insurgents.
A few minutes later, Bartlett executes a short rolling takeoff, then tilts the rotors forward and climbs. The acceleration presses me back into my seat. Bartlett levels off at 8,200 feet. The cockpit display shows we are cruising at 243 knots, just shy of 280 mph. Rock starts quizzing Bartlett again, posing questions about tactics, “torque splits,” the Osprey’s generators, its gearboxes. This is Bartlett’s final exam to earn the designation Tiltrotor Aircraft Commander, giving him authority to command Osprey flights. He must pass it while flying the Marine Corps’ most expensive aircraft, and in a combat zone.
Half an hour after takeoff, we’re ten minutes from our destination, 135 miles from Al Asad. We begin a wide, spiraling descent into the FOB. My ears pop. All I can see in any direction below, except the collection of concrete barriers and tents called Korean Village, is orangish sand. Dust swirls up as Bartlett gently eases us down on a metal mat inside the perimeter, a couple of hundred feet from where the Osprey carrying the general has landed. Bartlett and Rock keep the engines running.
Fifteen minutes later, after some civilian contractors with luggage and a couple of Marines have climbed into the back of our Osprey to catch a ride to Al Asad, Bartlett tells the crew chiefs over the intercom, “Okay, guys, we’re going to come up into a fairly high hover.” The Osprey zooms up into the promised hover, then Rock says, “Doors closed. Ready to go fast.” On the cockpit display panel in front of me, in white block letters, I see a fault has posted: r eaps fail. One of the right nacelle’s two engine air particle separators, blowers at the mouth of the Osprey’s engines to filter sand and dirt out of the air they suck in, has malfunctioned. The device is abbreviated EAPS and known as an “eeps.”
“I’ve seen this happen before,” Rock tells Bartlett. “Ever since we got that mod, that tightened up the parameters for declaring EAPS failed. If you come up very high power out of—on takeoff, that’ll post. I can pretty much guarantee it won’t reset just by shutting it off and turning it back on, but it probably will reset if you reset the circuit breakers.” The entire Osprey fleet, Rock explains to me, has been having trouble with the EAPS, which operates through hydraulic pressure. Before VMM-263 left for Iraq, two engine fires at New River were blamed on h
ydraulic leaks in the device, and Bell-Boeing sent technicians to modify the EAPS on the squadron’s Ospreys. They rerouted a drain to prevent leaking hydraulic fluid from flowing out of the EAPS into the engine. They also shortened the time required for an EAPS to shut itself down if an internal sensor detected a potential leak. Now the EAPS shuts down when the Osprey lifts off quickly, probably because the maneuver causes a quick rise in hydraulic pressure, Rock figures. Rock decides against trying to get the EAPS working again before we get back to Al Asad because resetting its circuit breaker might cause some other problem. There is no risk to safety involved; the purpose of the EAPS is to extend the long-term life of the Osprey’s engines.
Despite such annoyances, VMM-263’s Ospreys accomplished literally 99 percent of their missions in Iraq. Two additional Ospreys were sent to the squadron during its seven months there, and the dozen aircraft held up well enough that the Marines left them there to be flown by a second squadron, VMM-162, which replaced Rock’s in April 2008.
After their return from Iraq, Rock, Faibisoff, and crew chief Sergeant Danny Herrman took questions at a Pentagon news conference with the deputy commandant for aviation, Lieutenant General George Trautman. The Osprey’s critics were still taking shots at the aircraft, saying the Marines had only used it as “a truck” to haul cargo and passengers, and that it hadn’t yet faced the true test of combat. Trautman said the Marine Corps was proud of what the squadron had achieved in Iraq, and pleased with the Osprey. As Rock had told him at Al Asad the previous Thanksgiving, Trautman recalled, the Osprey’s first deployment had been a test, not a final exam. “We’re on a journey to exploit a new and revolutionary technology,” Trautman said. “And we’re going to continue to learn lessons, and we’re going to continue to improve and continue to work hard to exploit the capabilities this airplane brings.” VMM-263, he added, “spent seven months deployed and came back safely and did every single mission that they were asked to do.”
Accomplishing his mission and getting his Marines home safely were Rock’s goals when he took his squadron to Iraq. He also wanted to demonstrate that the Osprey was a safe, useful transport whose unique tilt-rotor capabilities were going to make the Marine Corps more effective, save lives, and help win battles. After devoting eleven years of his life to the Osprey, though, and after all he had lived through during those years, Rock’s attitude toward the aircraft had been tempered by experience. “When I first started, it was absolutely the dream machine,” Rock told me. “I didn’t know any better, and I came in and it was just a tremendous opportunity to fly a tremendous airplane. I had no idea the cost, the trial that it would be to get it to that point. So some time— and no doubt slowly, gradually, over the course of my experience—it became less and less about ‘I want this because I want the plane to succeed’ and more about ‘we have got great Marines working on this, they have dedicated themselves to it, it’s a great capability and I’m proud to be among them.’ ” Rock still believed in the Osprey, but he no longer saw it as a dream machine. It had extraordinary capabilities, but it also had its “warts,” as Rock put it. “The airplane is just an airplane,” he said. “It’s just a machine.” He wanted the machine to succeed, but not for its own sake. He wanted it to succeed for the Marines who were going to fly in it, and for those who had died in it. “I never talked to anybody about it, because you can’t explain that kind of thing,” he told me, but it was something he thought about a lot in Iraq, usually when he was alone in his “can” at Al Asad. Rock only went there to sleep, and before he slept, he always prayed. He asked God to safeguard his family and friends. He asked for the wisdom and skill to accomplish his mission and get all his Marines back to their loved ones. He also prayed for all the brother Marines he had lost seven years earlier at Marana and New River. “I was just remembering friends of mine who died trying to get to this point,” Rock said. “These were great Marines and good friends of mine. It was an honor to be able to realize—to be there at the realization of the purpose they had given their life for.” He wouldn’t have wanted it said they had died in vain.
* * *
In June 2008, after awarding Rock a Bronze Star for his success in leading the first squadron ever to deploy with the Osprey, the Marine Corps sent him to Fort Worth to speak at a conference of Marine aviators and representatives of the contractors who build their aircraft. Dick Spivey was there, and the two met, the salesman with a dream and the pilot of the machine the dream inspired. Now sixty-seven, Spivey had taken early retirement from Bell Helicopter in August 2002 but was rehired as a consultant almost immediately. He spent four more years with the company doing much the same job.
When his colleagues had thought Spivey was leaving Bell for good, 150 or so of them gathered one Friday night to mark his retirement, an event videotaped by his son, Brett. There was a lavish buffet dinner and an open bar. There were nostalgic speeches about Spivey’s triumphs and trip-ups. There was praise for his ability to “make every customer feel like he’s talking to him.” One of his former bosses extolled Spivey’s creativity and his unparalleled skill at delivering any of five briefings: the two-hour, the one-hour, the twenty-minute, the written, or the “elevator,” when “you’ve got one floor to tell your whole story.” Another Bell marketer harvested guffaws when he stood up with his elbows to his sides and his index fingers pointed toward the ceiling, then asked the group if it wasn’t true that Spivey had “built his career by saying— correct me if I’m wrong—‘takes off like a helicopter’ ”—the man rotated his forearms downward so his fingers pointed forward—“ ‘flies like an airplane.’ ” Someone read aloud a congratulatory e-mail from General Jim Jones, the Marine Corps commandant at the time. Someone read a letter from Bell’s president in those days, John Murphey, who couldn’t attend. Without Spivey, Murphey said, “there wouldn’t be a V-22 Osprey.” Former XV-15 test pilot Dorman Cannon remembered the early years of Bell’s efforts to market the tiltrotor. “Everywhere we turned, Dick Spivey was around,” Cannon said. Selling the tiltrotor hadn’t just been Spivey’s job, it had been his passion.
Three weeks after his retirement party in 2002, Spivey was back marketing the tiltrotor, giving briefings on vortex ring state to help save the Osprey and promoting the Quad TiltRotor, the giant Osprey derivative Bell was trying to sell the Pentagon. The next year, two months after Undersecretary of Defense Pete Aldridge changed his mind and gave the Osprey a clean bill of health, Bell donated its XV-15 tiltrotor demonstrator to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum. In a story on the donation, reporter Katie Fairbank of the Dallas Morning News quoted Spivey saying he had never lost faith in the tiltrotor. “We never had any doubt. We thought the V-22 was tarred and feathered,” Spivey said. “The future is so bright.”
Spivey left Bell for good in February 2006, a month before Rock took command of VMM-263, but he followed the squadron’s progress eagerly. Just before VMM-263 went to Iraq, in an e-mail to a list of people he knew were interested, Spivey said: “Cross your fingers folks, the time is near to find out if all our efforts will pay off.”
After Rock’s talk at Fort Worth’s Worthington Hotel in June 2008, Spivey approached, introduced himself, and asked if they could talk a bit more. They sat on some folding chairs and Spivey asked Rock questions about how the Osprey had done in Iraq. Rock didn’t remember Spivey’s specific questions later, but he was struck by how intense he seemed in asking them, and how he drank in Rock’s answers. As they talked, the older man seemed almost emotional.
Spivey was. He had marketed the tiltrotor to the Marines as a dream machine, but the Osprey had turned into a nightmare. The Osprey’s cost in dollars and lives and its long, tortuous history had nearly discredited the tiltrotor, he knew, and indefinitely deferred the dream. Spivey was confident the nightmare was over now, and after talking to Rock, he was sure the Marines and the Air Force soon would be relying heavily on the Osprey. The Army might even get interested again, he ventured. Spivey blamed the machiner
y of procurement—the way the Pentagon buys weapons—rather than the machine itself for the Osprey’s troubles. The Pentagon had redeemed the Osprey in the end, he mused, but maybe Ken Wernicke had been right. Wernicke was the idealistic tiltrotor engineer who had nearly resigned from Bell in 1983 rather than try to design a tiltrotor to what he saw as the military’s wildly ambitious specifications. “I probably didn’t realize just how difficult it was,” Spivey reflected. “The dreams were simplistic compared to the reality. The issues associated with a government procurement are so complicated. Name one that hasn’t had its problems.”
Now that the Osprey was fielded, Spivey was sure the dream was alive. Once the military proved tiltrotors safe, he predicted, civilians would want to fly in them, too. “You’ve got to figure out a way to build them less expensively,” he conceded. “They don’t need to be as complicated as they are.” If that could be done, though, Spivey had no doubt the tiltrotor still would change the world as much as the jet engine had. He wasn’t sure he would live to see it, but “I actually still do believe in it, despite what everybody thinks,” he said. The tiltrotor was still his dream machine, and always would be.
EPILOGUE
Adecade to the day after the disaster at Marana, tragedy revisited the Osprey for the first time since its Dark Ages. On a pitch-black night in southern Afghanistan, an Air Force Special Operations Command CV-22B Osprey, one of three carrying Army Rangers on a raid against an insurgent target, touched down at more than 90 miles an hour a quarter mile short of its intended landing zone, a desolate area five kilometers east/southeast of the village of Qalat. With its landing gear down and its nacelles tilted upward at more than 80 degrees—not quite in 90-degree helicopter mode—the Osprey sped across the flat, sandy earth in what some of the Rangers on board thought was just a fast roll-on landing. Then its front wheels bounced, smacked into the ground, and collapsed. The Osprey’s bulbous nose began plowing into the soft soil, then hit a two-foot-deep gully, flipping the aircraft onto its back, tail over nose. The cockpit was crushed. The fuselage slammed into the ground upside down. The pilot and an enlisted flight engineer from the Air Force’s 8th Special Operations Squadron, the latter sitting in the jump seat behind and between the pilots, were killed. So were a corporal from the Army’s 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, and an Afghan woman interpreter, both riding in the middle of the cabin. The copilot, thrown from the aircraft still strapped into his seat, survived. So did another Air Force flight engineer, thirteen other Rangers, and a male Afghan interpreter, all of whom had been kneeling in the cabin, wearing safety harnesses attached to the floor. Many had serious injuries.
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