Osprey’s Widows Plead Case at Pentagon

The widows of three Marines killed last year in a crash of the innovative Osprey aircraft implored the Pentagon on Friday to correct safety problems afflicting what one of them called a “multibillion-dollar program that has sadly spun out of control.”

At a public hearing conducted by a Pentagon study panel assigned to review the Osprey program, the widows said the Marine pilots were given inadequate guidance on the plane’s hazards before the April 8 crash, and they asserted that the program had been allowed to advance too far without proper testing.

“This program was pushed too far, too fast,” said a tearful Trisha Brow, wife of deceased pilot Maj. John Brow. “Stop the V-22 from killing the pilots that fly it. . . . There’s so much political pressure to do this program, it’s like a runaway train.”

But other witnesses at the hearing, held in this Washington suburb, told the four-member panel that the tilt-rotor aircraft represents a groundbreaking technology that is badly needed to enhance the Marines’ mission and prop up a struggling U.S. aerospace industry.

The Osprey has rotors that tilt between horizontal and vertical positions, enabling the aircraft to take off and land like a helicopter but to cruise with the speed and range of a fixed-wing aircraft.

The review panel was set up by the Pentagon late last year to take a new look at the 18-year-old program after two fatal crashes last year and a series of government reports that raised questions about the $40-billion effort. It is due to make its report to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in late April; panel members gave no hint of their views at the hearing.

The three widows described their families’ anguish at the crash, which occurred at Marana, Ariz., after an early evening exercise. Nineteen Marines died in the accident, which occurred as the Osprey descended rapidly in preparation for landing.

The families of several victims of the April crash have retained lawyers and are suing the Osprey’s manufacturers, Bell Helicopter Textron and Boeing Co.

Connie Gruber, wife of pilot Maj. Brooks S. Gruber, said the mishap was “an accident that could have been avoided if only Bell Boeing had provided the Marines with a safe aircraft.”

She condemned the findings of an accident report that concluded that pilot error was a factor in the fatal accident. She insisted that the accident was “something [the pilots] are in no way responsible for,” and she said that assertion “compounds our pain.”

Attorneys for the families maintain that neither the pilots’ manual nor the training simulators gave the pilots warning of the risk of “vortex ring state.” The term describes a phenomenon that can occur when the Osprey descends rapidly with little forward speed, causing it to lose lift and roll out of control.

The widow of Marine Staff Sgt. William Brian Nelson, an aerial observer-mechanic on the flight, tearfully read a note that Nelson had written to her before he left for the exercise.

Choking back tears, she read: “It’s really hard to believe that Brian Nelson has a beautiful wife, soon-to-be two beautiful children and a house with a dog. It’s all because of you. You’ve given me this wonderful life, and I thank you for it. I love you very much.”

Another witness, Rep. Bob Filner (D-San Diego), said he was concerned about the Marines’ plans to base squadrons of Ospreys in the San Diego area, posing the danger of additional crashes. Filner said constituents have told him that the Marines intend to base 48 Ospreys at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar and an additional 60 at Camp Pendleton.

The Osprey’s accidents suggested that the aircraft might fall on residential areas or even on the congested interstate highways that snake through San Diego County. “You’ve got this incredibly unsafe thing,” Filner said.

A Marine Corps spokesman, Lt. David Nevers, said Marines and authorities in Southern California have begun studying the environmental effects of basing Ospreys in the region. But he said no plans are final.

John Douglass, president and chief executive of the Aerospace Industries Assn., argued that the U.S. aerospace sector is facing “tough times” and needs the boost that the Osprey program would provide. It is one of the few areas where the U.S. industry could leap ahead of foreign rivals, he said.