Narrator: The V-22 Osprey is the ultimate transformer, designed to drop special operations forces behind enemy lines. First as a helicopter, and then as an airplane for a quick getaway. It was like being strapped into a drag car. It was so exciting. Narrator: But too often, it's been deadly. Reports show the Osprey has suffered more than 24 serious accidents since the 1990s, killing 62 service members and civilians, and earning it the nickname Widow-Maker. News anchor: Breaking overnight, divers found wreckage and the remains of crew members from a US Air Force Osprey that crashed in southwest Japan. Narrator: The latest tragedy in Japan halted production and grounded the entire fleet. Ryan: The Osprey is experiencing some of the more catastrophic accidents more frequently, and then accidents in general more frequently. Narrator: So what's been going wrong with the Osprey?

And does the revolutionary
machine deserve its reputation? We pored over the data and compared the Osprey to
other aircraft in the fleet to find out. The United States Marine Corps trains its new Osprey flight crews
here at Air Station New River in North Carolina. Narrator: On top of combat duties, the Osprey can offer a rapid response to humanitarian disasters. The Osprey, what it allows us to do is stay further
back in the safe areas and then go further into
the bad areas as well. You're going to have two routes on there. One will be labeled lead, and the other one will
be labeled dash two. Narrator: Captain Clayton
Scott, call sign Muzzle, works as a weapons and tactics instructor for Marine Squadron VMM-261. Scott: It's been a long road coming, and it's been a science
project for a lot of people. The engineers sought to
balance the capabilities of a helicopter with the capabilities

of a fixed-wing aircraft. Narrator: To take off and land, two large propellers lift
the Osprey like a helicopter. The 6,000-plus-horsepower
engines can carry a crew of four and up to 24 fully loaded combat troops, or 20,000 pounds of
equipment in its belly. Scott: The downwash coming off
of the Osprey is about the same as a Category 2 hurricane. Narrator: And here's the clever part. When the helicopter becomes an airplane, the huge propellers
tilt forward 90 degrees in just a few seconds with
the flick of a switch. Narrator: Once in airplane mode, the Osprey can reach top speeds of 320 miles an hour,
over 100 miles an hour faster than helicopters
like the Super Stallion. A 50-caliber machine gun sits at the back to provide protection. And of course, there's
no need for a runway.

when it comes to landing. On the ground, the Osprey
can transform again. The wings and rotors fold away neatly, so that it can be stowed below
deck on aircraft carriers. Yet all this complex ingenuity has come at a cost, both financial and human. Breaking news overnight, a US military aircraft
crashed off the coast of southern Japan. Narrator: In the wake
of the Japan disaster, Congress demanded
answers in an open letter to the Secretary of Defense. The House Oversight
Committee slammed an aircraft that was plagued by reduced
visibility and engine failure, and said that in spite of
attempts to improve safety, crash casualties continue. The media paint the Osprey as a liability the military should have
done away with years ago. It has a bad reputation, and it's had a bad
reputation for years now. Narrator: To work out whether this reputation is
deserved or not, we took a look through all the available
accident data for the Osprey

and similar aircraft. So we pull data from
the Naval Safety Command and Air Force Safety Center on the Osprey, as well as fixed-wing and rotor aircraft. We were looking for a kind
of big picture of, OK, how dangerous is the Osprey? What are the fatalities? How
often are there injuries? How often are there mishaps? What are the records for
some of these aircraft, and how do they compare? Narrator: Answers to those questions will come a little later, but to understand the
tragedies of the present day, it's worth looking back at how the story of the Osprey began. The idea for a versatile
troop carrier was born out of another tragedy in US military history, the Iran hostage crisis of 1979. News anchor: Iranian militants
seize the American embassy in Iran. Narrator: The military
planned a rescue mission for the 63 American hostages held inside the US Embassy in
Tehran using Navy ships,

Air Force planes, Army helicopters, and Marines on the ground. Before transitioning to the Osprey, Todd Lovell flew one of the MC-130 during Operation Eagle Claw. Todd: That mission that was supposed to take two nights. Desert one was night one, then the helicopters were supposed to go on to desert two, spend the night, and then they were supposed to go rescue the hostages after that. Narrator: The rescue never happened. Three helicopters broke down, and the mission was aborted. Another helicopter crashed into a Hercules transport plane laden with fuel. The US military lost eight servicemen. The military didn't know it yet, but what it needed was the Osprey. CV-22 right now could go direct to downtown Tehran, do the hostage rescue, and get out all in one period of darkness. Narrator: Test pilot's first flew tilt-rotor prototypes in the 1950s. But it wasn't until the '80s that Bell Helicopters

and Boeing were awarded the contract to build the Osprey. With the first flight coming in 1989, initial research and design costs came to $2.7 billion, or about $6 billion today. By the early '90s, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney tried to cancel the entire project, claiming it was too expensive and that there weren't enough mission roles for it to fill. But Congress stepped in to save it. Much of the cost came down to the need to build not one, but three versions of the V-22. First up is the MV-22B, the no-frills version flown by the Marine Corps. Still, each of the 350 Ospreys it operates today costs $71 million. The model flown by the Air Force costs $90 million and is designed to be used for special operations. Think Delta Force and Navy Seals. It's equipped with specialized radar that lets the plane fly low and fast, hugging the terrain.

We were designed to operate behind enemy lines and to keep as low a profile as possible. Narrator: The Navy operates the newest version, the CMV-22B, to ferry sailors and equipment to and from aircraft carriers, as well as carry out search-and-rescue operations. For the more than a $100 million ticket price, you get extra fuel tanks to increase the range up to 1,300 miles. Todd: You look at them on the outside, they look pretty similar, but start looking at screens and things on the inside, they do look different. Narrator: The first fatal crash came in July 1992, when one of the four prototypes crashed in the Potomac River, killing seven. In April 2000, a lack of training was identified as the cause of the deadliest ever Osprey crash in Yuma, Arizona, killing 19 Marines. The aircraft stalled because of a phenomenon called vortex ring state.

It occurs when a helicopter descends too fast, basically slipping into the empty column of air pushed away by the rotors. This destabilizes the blades, making them less able to generate lift. Investigators found the disaster was avoidable. Everyone assumed it was just like a helicopter and hadn't explored where it occurs and how to get out of it. So in a tilt-rotor, just bump the nacelles forward, and it'll very quickly fly out of it. Narrator: Later that year, four Marines died when an Osprey crashed into a North Carolina forest. An inquiry later found the Marine Corps rushed testing during the Osprey's development and could have discovered the mechanical flaw that caused the crash. We were grounded for almost two years. Narrator: The same year, the Marine Corps charged eight officers, including a general and the Osprey Squadron commander, with falsifying maintenance reports.

to hide continuing
problems with the MV-22B. By 2007, the Marines declared
the Osprey fully operational, and in 2009, the Air Force
began flying its version. Meanwhile, a congressional
report found the cost to operate the new
aircraft over its lifetime had skyrocketed. And as the statistics show,
incidents continued to occur. From 2010 to 2027, serious crashes led to 12 deaths and 73 injuries. Then in 2022 and 2023, four more Osprey crashes caused 20 deaths. All these crashes
occurred during training. An investigation revealed
a problem with the clutch, which transfers power from
the engine to the rotors and, in case one engine fails,
keeps both blades turning. As we were coming in, we
had one engine working, none of our hydraulics. So our flight actuators and components were not working properly. So it made for a very
nerve-racking landing.

Narrator: Former Osprey crew
chief Nicholas McCullough relives a lucky escape he had in 2013, when one engine iced over and failed during winter mountain training. We did not get the second
engine to fire back on, but we kept our other
engine from flaming out, and we were able to land, made an emergency landing
at a small airfield. And on one engine.
Definitely a level of scared that I don't think I
ever want to feel again. But being able to get through that again, it goes back to the
aircraft's capabilities. Narrator: There
have been 16 incidents linked to the Osprey's clutch after the fatal crash in
Japan in November 2023. The militaries of the US and Japan, the only other country to fly the Osprey, grounded their fleets. The Pentagon says it knows
which mechanical part failed. Officials authorized the Osprey fleet to begin flying again three months later.

But just maintaining the aging fleet keeps getting more expensive. The aircraft had to be
configured in a certain way to do maintenance on certain components, so it just added another
level of complexity or time. A simple task had to
take a little bit longer. Narrator: By 2022, it cost nearly $80,000 per flight hour for a single Air Force Osprey. Yet that year, only 52% of the fleet could fly at all, while
the rest were grounded due to maintenance issues and
problems getting spare parts. So let's get back to the data. It's not possible to do a
like-for-like comparison, since the Osprey is unique. But when you line it up
next to its closest cousins, the results aren't great. Ryan: From a numbers and data
standpoint, it's pretty bad. Over 50 service member deaths
is not exactly something you can shrug off. Narrator: The military
rank accidents as mishaps.

with Class A mishaps involving fatalities, permanent disabilities, or more
than $2.5 million in damage. The overall mishap rate
for the Marines CV-22, the most flown of all the Ospreys, is 46.64 mishaps per 100,000 flying hours. Compared to two other
transport helicopters, the Navy's H-60s and the
Marines' CH-53 King Stallion and Super Stallion variants, Osprey crashes happen three
to four times more often. The Osprey is experiencing some of the more catastrophic
accidents more frequently and accidents in general more frequently. Narrator: And the fact that it can carry as
many as 28 people means that if things do go wrong,
large losses of life can follow. Because it's transport aircraft, it doesn't have ejection seats. So it's not just the loss of an airplane, it's the loss of life that draws the attention to the airplane.

Narrator: In spite of the tragedies behind the statistics, the Osprey is going to be hard to keep on the ground. That's because the US military knows it's an aircraft with a unique set of skills for which there is yet no true replacement. The Osprey may prove expensive to keep in the air, but is it too dangerous? The US Army, which pulled out of the Osprey program, uses the Black Hawk to ferry most of its soldiers in and out of combat. Ryan: Looking at just the data for the last year for tilt-rotor and helicopter crashes, Black Hawk helicopter crashes made out three of the seven, and then of the total 30 service member deaths, 16 were from those crashes. Yet the Osprey is the one that gets the greater attention. Narrator: And when compared to the slower yet bigger CH-53s over the last 23 years...

The King and the Super Stallion over the same time period had 82 service member deaths. So significantly more.

Narrator: Those who have flown the Osprey continue to believe in it.

Todd: Once you got in the airplane and really could see what it could do, that was the thing that drove me forward. It's not a perfect aircraft. I know that. But when I think about all the pros from a combat readiness standpoint, from a humanitarian assistance standpoint, I think that the benefits outweigh the risk that come with this aircraft.

Narrator: The Army recently announced plans to buy a next-generation tilt-rotor, the V-280 Valor, to replace its workhorse, the Black Hawk. So while the Osprey may be on the way out, the need for a versatile transformer is not.

The second-greatest thrill flying is actually flying. The greatest thrill is landing, regardless of the aircraft you're in.

Is The Osprey The Most Dangerous Aircraft In The US Military? | True Cost | Business Insider

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