Navy Ignored Design Flaw in Copter, Badham Charges

Rep. Robert Badham on Friday accused Navy officials of ignoring an apparent design flaw in the Super Stallion helicopter and called on the service to ground the entire helicopter fleet until the safety problem is corrected.

Navy officials knew as early as 1976 that the Marine Corps’ accident-plagued, heavy-lift CH-53E and the Navy’s corresponding MH-53E may have been designed with a structural problem but did nothing to fix it, the Republican congressman said at a press conference in his Newport Beach office.

Badham is a member of the House Armed Services Committee, which is investigating a string of Super Stallion accidents and deaths. According to Badham, investigators Tuesday uncovered internal Navy memos revealing that the helicopter’s maker, Sikorsky Aircraft Co., told the Navy more than a decade ago of the powerful helicopter’s problems, but the Navy authorized their use anyway, Badham said.

The Super Stallion has been involved in at least 39 accidents and emergency landings since its inception, Badham said. Reports show that 24 crew members have died in Sea Stallion crashes.

“I don’t want to paint the whole Navy with the brush of lying and deceit until I get the facts,” Badham said. “ . . . It could be just a few departments or officers. The Congress and Marine Corps were not given full and complete information.”

Badham sent a letter outlining his concerns to Navy Secretary John Lehman and asking that the worldwide fleet of 92 helicopters be grounded.

Lehman refused to comment Friday on Badham’s allegations.

“The secretary has not had the opportunity to review Congressman Badham’s letter,” said Cmdr. Mark Neuhart, Lehman’s spokesman. “We will address the issues contained in the letter once we have the opportunity to review its contents.”

Sikorsky officials also refused to comment Friday.

“I have seen the letter, but I haven’t seen the full (Armed Services Committee) report,” said Robert Stangarone, spokesman for Sikorsky Aircraft in Stratford, Conn. “We are anxious to see the full report, and we plan to review it as soon as we have it in hand.”

The report, which the committee has worked on since May, should be released in the next week or two, Badham said.

The Super Stallion, the largest helicopter made outside the Soviet Union, is capable of carrying 55 combat-equipped troops or lifting 16 tons of equipment. It costs up to $24 million.

But the three-engine aircraft has been plagued by problems since first being delivered to the Navy and Marines in 1980. Reports indicate that it has been involved in six fatal crashes that killed 24 crew members, and that 17 Marines have been injured in mishaps involving the Super Stallion.

Four of the crashes involved crew members stationed at Tustin Marine Corps Air Station, where about 45 of the helicopters are based in two heavy helicopter squadrons. The latest fatal crash involving a Super Stallion was Jan. 8 near the Salton Sea Test Range in Imperial County. All of the chopper’s five crew members were killed.

According to Badham, the helicopter was designed so that its heavy external loads, airframe and main rotors all produce a vibration of nearly the same low frequency. Because the vibrations are at about the same frequency, their effects during flight are multiplied dramatically.

This compounded vibration has caused “overstress” of the helicopter’s critical moving parts on occasion and a visible twisting of the helicopter’s tail section, Badham said. Instead of trying to find out why this happens and fixing the problem, the Navy instead has put “Band-Aids” on the problem, Badham charged.

“They (the Navy) thought they fixed it by putting on filters and dampers,” Badham said, but the remedial efforts only caused the problems to be hidden from the pilots and flight control systems.

Although Badham said the data currently is insufficient to prove the problem caused any of the crashes, there is a strong possibility that a link could be proved if a complete technical study were done.