It can transform from helicopter to airplane in seconds, providing a vital role for the US military by ferrying troops in and out of combat zones. But the V-22 Osprey has also caused the deaths of 62 service members. A crash in Japan last year grounded the entire fleet. We compared accident data for the Osprey with that of its closest rivals to see whether it really deserves its "widow-maker" reputation.
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00:00The V-22 Osprey is the ultimate transformer, designed to drop special operations forces
00:07behind enemy lines, first as a helicopter and then as an aeroplane for a quick getaway.
00:13It was like being strapped into a drag car. It was so exciting.
00:18But too often, it's been deadly. Reports show the Osprey has suffered more than 24 serious
00:23accidents since the 1990s, killing 62 service members and civilians, and earning it the
00:30nickname Widowmaker.
00:32Breaking overnight, divers found wreckage in the remains of crew members from a US Air
00:36Force Osprey that crashed in southwest Japan.
00:39The latest tragedy in Japan halted production and grounded the entire fleet.
00:44The Osprey is experiencing some of the more catastrophic accidents more frequently and
00:49then accidents in general more frequently.
00:52So what's been going wrong with the Osprey, and does the revolutionary machine deserve
00:56its reputation?
00:57We pored over the data and compared the Osprey to other aircraft in the fleet to find out.
01:08The United States Marine Corps trains its new Osprey flight crews here at Air Station
01:13New River in North Carolina.
01:22One second. Copy.
01:24On top of combat duties, the Osprey can offer a rapid response to humanitarian disasters.
01:29The Osprey, what it allows us to do is stay further back in the safe areas, and then go
01:33further into the bad areas as well.
01:35You're going to have two routes on there. One will be labelled Lead, and the other one
01:38will be labelled Dash 2.
01:39Captain Clayton Scott, callsign Muzzle, works as a weapons and tactics instructor for Marine
01:44Squadron VMM-261.
01:46It's been a long road coming, and it's been a science project for a lot of people.
01:50The engineers sought to balance the capabilities of a helicopter with the capabilities of a
01:55fixed wing aircraft.
01:58To take off and land, two large propellers lift the Osprey like a helicopter.
02:03The 6,000 plus horsepower engines can carry a crew of four, and up to 24 fully loaded
02:09combat troops, or 20,000 pounds of equipment in its belly.
02:13The downwash coming off of the Osprey is about the same as a Category 2 hurricane.
02:18And here's the clever part, when the helicopter becomes an aeroplane.
02:22The huge propellers tilt forward 90 degrees in just a few seconds with the flick of a switch.
02:27Gears up, lights out, doors closed, crew.
02:29Setback.
02:30Alright, gonna go fast.
02:31Once in aeroplane mode, the Osprey can reach top speeds of 320 miles an hour, over a hundred
02:37miles an hour faster than helicopters like the Super Stallion.
02:41A .50 caliber machine gun sits at the back to provide protection.
02:46And of course, there's no need for a runway when it comes to landing.
02:50On the ground, the Osprey can transform again.
02:53The wings and rotors fold away neatly so that it can be stowed below deck on aircraft carriers.
02:58Yet all this complex ingenuity has come at a cost, both financial and human.
03:05Breaking news overnight, a U.S. military aircraft crashed off the coast of southern Japan.
03:11In the wake of the Japan disaster, Congress demanded answers.
03:15In an open letter to the Secretary of Defense, the House Oversight Committee slammed an aircraft
03:20that was plagued by reduced visibility and engine failure, and said that in spite of
03:24attempts to improve safety, crash casualties continue.
03:28The media paint the Osprey as a liability the military should have done away with years ago.
03:33It has a bad reputation and it's had a bad reputation for years now.
03:38To work out whether this reputation is deserved or not, we took a look through all the available
03:44accident data for the Osprey and similar aircraft.
03:47So we pulled data from the Naval Safety Command and Air Force Safety Center on the Osprey,
03:53as well as fixed wing and rotor aircraft.
03:55We were looking for a kind of big picture of, OK, how dangerous is the Osprey?
04:01What are the fatalities?
04:02How often are there injuries?
04:03How often are there mishaps?
04:05What are the records for some of these aircraft and how do they compare?
04:08Answers to those questions will come a little later.
04:12But to understand the tragedies of the present day, it's worth looking back at how the story
04:17of the Osprey began.
04:20The idea for a versatile troop carrier was born out of another tragedy in U.S. military
04:25history, the Iran hostage crisis of 1979.
04:29Iranian militants seized the American embassy in Iran.
04:33The military planned a rescue mission for the 63 American hostages held inside the U.S.
04:38embassy in Tehran using Navy ships, Air Force planes, Army helicopters and Marines on the
04:44ground.
04:45Before transitioning to the Osprey, Todd Lovell flew one of the MC-130s during Operation Eagle
04:51Claw.
04:52That mission that was supposed to take two nights, Desert One was night one.
04:56Then the helicopters were supposed to go on to Desert Two, spend the night, and then they
04:59were supposed to go rescue the hostages after that.
05:02The rescue never happened.
05:04Three helicopters broke down and the mission was aborted.
05:08Another helicopter crashed into a Hercules transport plane laden with fuel.
05:12The U.S. military lost eight servicemen.
05:15The military didn't know it yet, but what it needed was the Osprey.
05:19CV-22 right now could go direct to downtown Tehran, do the hostage rescue and get out
05:26all in one period of darkness.
05:30Test pilots first flew tiltrotor prototypes in the 1950s.
05:34But it wasn't until the 80s that Bell Helicopters and Boeing were awarded the contract to build
05:39the Osprey, with the first flight coming in 1989.
05:43Initial research and design costs came to $2.7 billion, or about $6 billion today.
05:50By the early 90s, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney tried to cancel the entire project,
05:55claiming it was too expensive and that there weren't enough mission roles for it to fill.
06:00But Congress stepped in to save it.
06:03Much of the cost came down to the need to build not one, but three versions of the V-22.
06:10First up is the MV-22B, the no-frills version flown by the Marine Corps.
06:15Still, each of the 350 Ospreys it operates today costs $71 million.
06:21The model flown by the Air Force costs $90 million and is designed to be used for special
06:25operations, think Delta Force and Navy SEALs.
06:29It's equipped with specialized radar that lets the plane fly low and fast, hugging the terrain.
06:36We were designed to operate behind enemy lines and to keep as low profile as possible.
06:42The Navy operates the newest version, the CMV-22B, to ferry sailors and equipment to
06:48and from aircraft carriers, as well as carry out search and rescue operations.
06:53For the more than $100 million ticket price, you get extra fuel tanks to increase the range
06:58up to 1,300 miles.
07:01You look at them on the outside, they look pretty similar, but start looking at screens
07:05and things on the inside, they do look different.
07:08The first fatal crash came in July 1992, when one of the four prototypes crashed in the
07:14Potomac River, killing seven.
07:16In April 2000, a lack of training was identified as the cause of the deadliest ever Osprey
07:22crash in Yuma, Arizona, killing 19 Marines.
07:26The aircraft stalled because of a phenomenon called vortex ring state.
07:31It occurs when a helicopter descends too fast, basically slipping into the empty column of
07:36air pushed away by the rotors.
07:39This destabilizes the blades, making them less able to generate lift.
07:44Investigators found the disaster was avoidable.
07:47Everyone assumed it was just like a helicopter and hadn't explored where it occurs and how
07:52to get out of it.
07:53So in a tilt rotor, just bump the nacelles forward and it'll very quickly fly out of
07:59it.
08:00Later that year, four Marines died when an Osprey crashed into a North Carolina forest.
08:05An inquiry later found the Marine Corps rushed testing during the Osprey's development and
08:10could have discovered the mechanical flaw that caused the crash.
08:13We were grounded for almost two years.
08:15The same year, the Marine Corps charged eight officers, including a general and the Osprey
08:20squadron commander with falsifying maintenance reports to hide continuing problems with the
08:26MV22B.
08:27By 2007, the Marines declared the Osprey fully operational, and in 2009, the Air Force began
08:33flying its version.
08:35Meanwhile, a congressional report found the cost to operate the new aircraft over its
08:40lifetime had skyrocketed.
08:42And as the statistics show, incidents continued to occur.
08:47In 2010 to 2020, seven serious crashes led to 12 deaths and 73 injuries.
08:54Then in 2022 and 2023, four more Osprey crashes caused 20 deaths.
09:00All these crashes occurred during training.
09:03An investigation revealed a problem with the clutch, which transfers power from the engine
09:08to the rotors, and in case one engine fails, keeps both blades turning.
09:13As we were coming in, we had one engine working, none of our hydraulics.
09:17So our flight actuators and components were not working properly.
09:21So it made for a very nerve wracking landing.
09:24Former Osprey crew chief Nicholas McCullough relives a lucky escape he had in 2013, when
09:29one engine iced over and failed during winter mountain training.
09:33We did not get the second engine to fire back on, but we kept our other engine from flaming
09:38out and we were able to land, made an emergency landing at a small airfield and on one engine.
09:45It gave me a level of scared that I don't think I ever want to feel again.
09:49But being able to get through that, again, it goes back to the aircraft's capabilities.
09:54There have been 16 incidents linked to the Osprey's clutch.
09:59After the fatal crash in Japan in November 2023, the militaries of the US and Japan,
10:05the only other country to fly the Osprey, grounded their fleets.
10:09The Pentagon says it knows which mechanical part failed.
10:13Officials authorised the Osprey fleet to begin flying again three months later, but
10:18just maintaining the ageing fleet keeps getting more expensive.
10:22The aircraft had to be configured in a certain way to do maintenance on certain components.
10:26So it just added another level of complexity or time to a simple task had to take a little
10:32bit longer.
10:33By 2022, it cost nearly $80,000 per flight hour for a single Air Force Osprey.
10:40Yet that year, only 52% of the fleet could fly at all, while the rest were grounded due
10:45to maintenance issues and problems getting spare parts.
10:50So let's get back to the data.
10:52It's not possible to do a like-for-like comparison since the Osprey is unique, but when you line
10:58it up next to its closest cousins, the results aren't great.
11:02From a numbers and data standpoint, it's pretty bad.
11:05Over 50 service member deaths is not exactly something you can shrug off.
11:08The military rank accidents as mishaps, with Class A mishaps involving fatalities, permanent
11:14disabilities or more than $2.5 million in damage.
11:19The overall mishap rate for the Marine CV-22, the most flown of all the Ospreys, is 46.64
11:26mishaps per 100,000 flying hours.
11:30Compared to two other transport helicopters, the Navy's H-60s and the Marine's CH-53
11:36King Stallion and Super Stallion variants, Osprey crashes happen three to four times
11:41more often.
11:43The Osprey is experiencing some of the more catastrophic accidents more frequently, and
11:47accidents in general more frequently.
11:49And the fact that it can carry as many as 28 people means that if things do go wrong,
11:53large losses of life can follow.
11:56Because it's a transport aircraft, it doesn't have ejection seats, so it's not just the
12:00loss of an airplane, it's the loss of life that draws the attention to the airplane.
12:07In spite of the tragedies behind the statistics, the Osprey is going to be hard to keep on
12:12the ground.
12:13That's because the US military knows it's an aircraft with a unique set of skills, for
12:18which there is yet no true replacement.
12:21The Osprey may prove expensive to keep in the air, but is it too dangerous?
12:26The US Army, which pulled out of the Osprey program, uses the Black Hawk to ferry most
12:31of its soldiers in and out of combat.
12:33Looking at just the data for the last year for tiltrotor and helicopter crashes, Black
12:38Hawk helicopter crashes made out three of the seven, and then of the total 30 service
12:44member deaths, 16 were from those crashes.
12:47Yet the Osprey is the one that gets the greater attention.
12:51And when compared to the slower, yet bigger CH-53s over the last 23 years...
12:57The King and the Super Stallion, over the same time period, had 82 service member deaths,
13:02so significantly more.
13:03Those who have flown the Osprey continue to believe in it.
13:07Once you got in the airplane and really could see what it could do, that was the thing that
13:11drove me forward.
13:13It's not a perfect aircraft, I know that, but when I think about all the pros from a
13:19combat readiness standpoint, from a humanitarian assistance standpoint, I think that the benefits
13:26outweigh the risk that come with this aircraft.
13:30The Army recently announced plans to buy a next generation tiltrotor, the V-280 Valor,
13:35to replace its workhorse, the Black Hawk.
13:38So while the Osprey may be on the way out, the need for a versatile transformer is not.
13:45The second greatest thrill of flying is actually flying.
13:48The greatest thrill is landing, regardless of the aircraft you're in.