Osprey Crash Investigations Often Blame the Pilots and Crew. Is That Fair?

The V-22 was a novel aircraft when it was conceived in the 1980s. Promising to give American service members an advantage on the battlefield, it was versatile. It could fly like a plane, but rotate its propellers to take off like a helicopter. Military services jumped on it, especially the Marine Corps. 

But since 2022, Ospreys have crashed four times during routine training exercises, killing a total of 20 service members. That figure is on top of more than 40 previous fatalities, many having occurred during a long and troubled development period for the aircraft. Concerns about the safety of the V-22 have lingered since its conception but have intensified with the recent deaths. 

As their families look for answers, another trend with the crash investigations has emerged, and it has to do with pilot error. Time and time again after these crashes, pilots and crew are either partially or fully blamed. For loved ones trying to cope with the loss of these service members – often having a hard time getting complete or direct answers about what happened to their lost son or daughter or spouse – the assignment of blame adds only more questions. They ask: If there are known problems with the aircraft, why keep putting service members in it – and is it fair to point the finger at them when tragedy strikes? 

• Host and reporter Drew F. Lawrence interviews family members and experts about the safety of the Osprey – and whether it is fair to blame crews when it crashes.

Additional Resources

• Pilots, Family Members Say Crew Is Being Unfairly Blamed for November's Deadly Air Force Osprey Crash
• He Died Trying to Save Fellow Marines from a Burning Osprey. Now, Spencer Collart Will Be Awarded for His Valor.
• Fatal Marine Osprey Crash Investigation Points to Pilot Error, Safety Lapses While Revealing Heroic Rescue Effort
• Deadly Marine Osprey Crash Triggers Wrongful Death Lawsuit Against Bell Textron, Boeing, Rolls-Royce
• Pilot Error Blamed for Marine Osprey Crash in Norway

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Transcript:

SPEAKERS

Lt. Col. (ret.) Doug Thumm, Thomas Novelly, Drew F. Lawrence, Amber Sax, Bart Collart, Tim Loranger, Congressman Stephen Lynch

Drew F. Lawrence 

The V-22 was a novel aircraft when it was conceived in the 1980s. Promising to give American service members an advantage on the battlefield, it was versatile. It could fly like a plane, but rotate its propellers to take off like a helicopter. Military services jumped on it, especially the Marine Corps. But since 2022, Ospreys have crashed four times during routine training exercises, killing a total of 20 service members. That figure is on top of more than 40 previous fatalities, many having occurred during a long and troubled development period for the aircraft. Concerns about the safety of the V-22 have lingered since its conception but have intensified with the recent deaths.

Congressman Stephen Lynch 

This repeated drum beat of fatalities is totally unacceptable.

Drew F. Lawrence 

That’s Congressman Stephen Lynch this June. He was in the midst of grilling military officials on the safety of the aircraft. At least one mechanical issue with engine clutches remains unsolved, and was responsible for at least one of the fatal crashes. Defense officials still don’t have a solution for the problem, anticipating it's going to take another year to fix. The Ospreys continue to fly, nonetheless.

Congressman Stephen Lynch 

If another Osprey goes down, we're done. This program is done. We've already had too much carnage. We've already lost too many good men and women. We have failed them by not providing them with safe aircraft. I don't believe this aircraft is safe. Nothing you have told me today leads me to believe that. I think it's still a very iffy situation. I think you've conceded that fact. So it's crazy to put more of our young men and women at risk...

Drew F. Lawrence 

Family members of those who have died in the Osprey attended the hearing, holding pictures of their loved ones in their arms. Some of those families had the same question as Congressman Lynch: If the military knows there’s a problem with the aircraft, why keep putting people in it? Here’s Amber Sax, she’s the spouse of a Marine who died in a   2022 Osprey crash that involved these mechanical problems. You’ll hear more from her later, too.

Amber Sax 

I'm not going anywhere, especially until I know that this has been resolved and that it's fixed and that hard clutch engagement is[n't] going to cost any more loss of lives. I mean, it already shouldn't have cost five lives.

Drew F. Lawrence 

As those families look for answers, another trend with the crash investigations has emerged, and it has to do with pilot error. Time and time again after these crashes, pilots and crew are either partially or fully blamed. For loved ones trying to cope with the loss of these service members often having a hard time getting complete or direct answers about what happened to their lost son or daughter or spouse, the assignment of blame only adds more questions. They ask: if there are known problems with the aircraft, why keep putting service members in it – and is it fair to point the finger at them when tragedy strikes?  For Military.com, my name is Drew Lawrence. It is August 30th and this is Fire Watch.

Bart Collart 

You know, I think it’s a shame that the pilots are getting, it seems they’re getting thrown under the bus a little bit when they’re not getting credit for having crashed it in such a way that they all survived.

Drew F. Lawrence 

That’s Bart Collart. His son, Cpl. Spencer Collart was a crew chief in an Osprey that crashed off the northern coast of Australia last year. It wasn’t until earlier this month that Bart and his family found out from military officials that his son hadn’t died directly in the crash as they’d thought – instead he departed the burning wreckage unscathed, but decided to go back in to try and rescue the two trapped Marine Corps pilots: Capt. Ellie LeBeau and Maj. Tobin Lewis. During those efforts, he perished in the wreckage and for his bravery, the Marine Corps approved Spencer for its highest non-combat award for valor. 

[Cpl. Collart receives honors at Arlington National Cemetery, NBC4 Washington]

Spencer was laid to rest at Arlington last year. His headstone will be updated to reflect his award for heroism. When I spoke to Bart this week, he was preparing to visit Spencer’s burial site later that day. Bart told me that Spencer looked up to LeBeau and Lewis as competent pilots, ones that the young, but seasoned crew chief revered.

Bart Collart 

Spencer was not the kind of guy to impress easily. He just wasn't. It was hard to impress Spencer. You really had to earn his respect, but it's just the way he was. And, boy, I tell you, he told us on several occasions, you know, how much he thought of of Major Tobin and and Ellie, you know, he said that she was always the smartest person in the room, and that Tobin was, you know, just a by the book kind of guy, just an amazing pilot. He had a lot of flight hours, too – a lot of experience. I know that he thought, you know, for Spencer to say that about somebody that says a lot.

Drew F. Lawrence 

I had also spoken to a V-22 pilot recently who expressed that same admiration and confidence in the pilots, and who was surprised it wasn’t a mechanical failure that caused the crash. Bart was surprised about that, too. There were no mechanical errors found in the investigation.  Instead, the investigation pointed fingers at “pilot error and complacency” as the cause. It’s a bit ambiguous as to what that means in the investigation – and exactly who the investigation is blaming.  We spoke to experts who offered a broader look at what “pilot error” really means. In the case of the Australia mishap, there were several other factors involved in the crash. One was a matter of fuel: planners intended the Osprey to have 7,500 pounds of fuel, instead of the actual 9,000  pounds that were loaded into it. According to the investigation, crews tried to burn off as much of it as possible before take-off.  In fact, the Osprey that crashed should have never been deemed safe-for-flight before take-off, the investigation said. It recommended two people – not pilots involved in the flight – for punishment in the wake of the crash. And the flight recorder was destroyed, meaning the investigation was conducted based on witness testimony and other physical evidence from the crash.  In the final legs of the exercise, when the lead Osprey was ready to land, the pilot of that Osprey miscalculated the approach to the landing zone. They reduced speed, causing the two Osprey’s to come within 300 feet of each other and forcing Lewis and LeBeau to veer while overloaded with fuel to avoid a collision. The quick maneuvers caused the Osprey to nose dive, and Lewis took control of the sticks with both hands to level it out for the crash landing. Of the 23 Marines aboard, 21 – including Spencer – survived the initial crash. It all happened in seconds.  If even one of these factors had changed, the outcome might have been different. It’s a string of decisions, all made by service members often with little time to react. Here’s Doug Thumm, he’s a retired Marine Lt. Col. who flew the Osprey and was involved in training future pilots on flight simulators. He’s talking about Osprey  mishaps in general here and how all operations involve that string of choices, some of which can seem innocuous at the moment but can snowball.  You

Lt. Col. (ret.) Doug Thumm 

You think of a football game, and you think at the end of the game, at the end of the fourth quarter, when time's running out, you put the kicker out there at the end of the game to kick that winning field goal. There were a plethora of things that happened. There were turnovers. There were all kinds of plays that were made and weren't made. There were decisions that were made by the coaches and everybody to put that person in that situation. Sometimes that's the case. Sometimes the error was made early on, right a turnover or whatever. And in the end, maybe because a decision wasn't made early on, something mechanical happened later on, because we didn't make that landing decision I talked about earlier, at the right time, or we didn't flip the right switch because we accidentally flipped the one that was next to it, whatever it happens to be. Unfortunately, there is almost always a human aspect to it, and it's hard to say that we're blaming humans for it, but unless we were to take the humans out of it, there's always a possibility that we're going to make a mistake somewhere in there.

Drew F. Lawrence 

Bart Collart said the pilots during his son's crash likely saved lives.

Bart Collart 

I think the fact that they were able to react in the way they did, avoid the mid-air collision and crash that thing in such a way that everybody on board survived the initial crash, is my understanding, and that says a lot about about the pilots and their abilities, that everybody survived the crash. That doesn't really happen often on an Osprey, it was completely full of people, completely full of fuel, and it somehow, somehow they crashed that thing in a way that the people walked away from it, which is really miraculous. So we, we consider the pilots to be heroes as well as Spencer. I mean, they, these folks, who are all walking and talking today because of their- how they responded to a bad situation, and that's how we look at it. I think Spencer would look at it the same way. And maybe there was something else involved that we'll just never know about, we really don't know.

Drew F. Lawrence 

So while “pilot error” may connote blame to an individual or individuals – it’s not that simple. Another of the recent crashes occurred last year off the coast of Japan, killing eight airmen in their Air Force Special Forces Command Osprey. Military.com reported that the aircraft experienced a new kind of mechanical issue, according to an accident report obtained by my colleagues Tom Novelly and Konstantin Toropin. I want to have Tom explain what they found out.

Thomas Novelly 

The major thing that we saw was that there was a novel mechanical issue that they had highlighted, an issue with a gear that separated and split off into the gearbox, causing the V-22 to crash. But we also saw that there was some blame put towards the crew, which those seemed to be at odds with each other, that this was a novel mechanical issue that hadn't been seen before this part had never failed in such a way. But then to have the family members reckon and deal with that their loved one may have contributed to this in some way, and that's a really tough issue to digest overall. So I think that's what we were trying to dig into, is we wanted to understand, how could the crew be blamed in this instance, or is it fair to criticize the crew in this report when this was an issue that had not been detected and had not been seen before, according to this report?

Drew F. Lawrence 

Tom spoke to one of the family members affected by the crash, Kim Krautter. Her son, Staff Sgt. Jake Galliher died in the Japan Osprey crash. She told him “That's what I can't process, that this blame has been put on the crew -- when the V-22s have a history of problems, and there was a problem that day.”  There are many factors, sometimes decided by time, sometimes decided by fate, sometimes decided by mechanics and yes, sometimes decided by people that can lead to crashes. It is rarely ever one factor, but the human factor is always assessed.

Lt. Col. (ret.) Doug Thumm 

I can't put myself in their shoes, but unfortunately, what I can tell you is, if you look at data, to 80% if not more, and definitely more than 50% of aviation mishaps across the board – so general aviation, commercial, military – have a human error aspect.

Drew F. Lawrence 

Thumm said that while the Osprey is difficult to maintain because its still relatively new tilt rotor technology is unusual, it was important to highlight the procedures as a fail safe for events. I asked him if those procedures were adequate. He described them as constantly evolving as pilots learn more about the aircraft.

Lt. Col. (ret.) Doug Thumm 

Well, I think they're adequate for the circumstances that we understand at the time that they're written and the time we're flying.

Drew F. Lawrence 

But on the other side of the human factor, there are also people – with flaws and motivations too – that conduct the investigations. Mechanical issues might require major and expensive changes to a program. Same goes for revisions to training that might entail more time in a simulator or restrictions on how the aircraft is used. Each aircraft costs tens of millions of dollars and there are so many people who put effort and decades into the program, too – there is a real, vested interest in the program from powerful decision makers. How much do the services and manufacturers want to keep the Osprey in the air despite its problems? And at what human cost? The Osprey’s Joint Program Office declined Fire Watch’s invitation to appear on this episode to answer some of these questions. We talked to Tim Loranger (Lorenjer), a Marine veteran, pilot and attorney for Wisner (Wizzner Bomb)  who is representing families who lost five loved ones in a 2022 crash caused by the clutch problem that still hasn’t been solved by the military, known as a hard clutch engagement. In May, Loranger announced a wrongful death lawsuit against the Osprey’s manufacturers, Bell Textron, Boeing and Rolls-Royce. And while that crash did not assign pilot error, Tim offered this:

Tim Loranger 

I can tell you that the pilot error issue is often a scapegoat and in the aviation cases I've had, I've worked on, where the manufacturer, the defendant, whoever it is, they want to say, well, you know, our aircraft failed, but the pilot could have just done something differently, and the outcome would have been different. Everybody's lives would have been saved And then when you look really close, you realize, you know, there are emergency procedures that are supposed to be followed. When this happens, here are the things that- these are the steps that a pilot is supposed to follow in the hope that those steps will lead to saving lives. But when you look really closely at the situation as it unfolds, most of the time, it doesn't happen the way we expect it will, or it happens in a time frame that is just unrealistic to have anyone respond in a way that's going to change the outcome, so to speak. I've seen this over and over again where the expert- they hire expert pilots who get up and say, 'Well, I went in the simulator and I recreated this failure, and I was able to follow these steps and fly the aircraft out and not crash.' And of course, it doesn't take into account the fact that those people are- they know the emergency's coming. I mean, they anticipated it. They're, they're sort of like cocked and ready to do the thing that they have to do that will, that will save their lives in the simulator. But it is such a conven-, it is a convenience, and it's used all the time to really deflect from the real issue, the real issue being that the machine itself has flaws and has failed.

Drew F. Lawrence 

At the same time we know that the V-22s are in constant demand by the military services, and pilots and even some family members who have lost loved ones in accidents recounted to me how much their spouse or child loved the aircraft.  Thumm said that the use of the Osprey potentially saved lives.

Lt. Col. (ret.) Doug Thumm 

It is a platform that was able to fly farther, fly faster, in my opinion, in those combat zones, was able to keep more people off the roads within Iraq and Afghanistan, a lot of improvised explicit devices, IEDs. So our ability to bring them through the air and get them where they need to go a little bit faster, but still land them at the point they needed to land.

Drew F. Lawrence 

Still, the rash of V-22 crashes have claimed dozens of service members’ lives. And each time one of these accidents occurs, a network of families emerges.

Amber Sax 

You're constantly in communication. You're in this together. You know that this is a very lonely walk, but you're walking alongside them.

Drew F. Lawrence 

This is Amber Sax again. Her husband Capt. John Sax, died as a result of a hard clutch engagement in 2022 — there was no pilot error assigned in that case — but she is represented by Tim Loranger, the lawyer we spoke to earlier. And she talked to use about the community born from tragedy.

Amber Sax 

And then whenever there is a new mishap, which unfortunately there have been two additional and there was one just a few months before ours, you begin connecting with those family members and sending just encouragement of, ‘I don't know if you ever want to talk, but I'm here if you do.’ And you know sometimes they'll take you up on that. Sometimes they want more space to grieve, but it is a family, and we do hold each other up, and we do support each other in ways that other people may not be able to do.

Drew F. Lawrence 

This was a theme we saw from other family members, but it leads to a larger conversation – one about answers.  At the end of the investigations into these crashes lie family notifications. For months or even a year, families of those lost to the Osprey have to wait for answers. Military officials show up at their homes with massive binders and lay out what happened in these crashes. And sometimes, the answers aren’t always there. Here’s Sax again.

Amber Sax 

After you go to this briefing, you're given a really big binder, and it's like drinking through a fire hose getting information, and you're processing it with all this grief and emotion behind it, and it takes weeks and months, and sometimes longer for you to even wrap your head around what happened, let alone understanding it from an engineering perspective, or from a pilot's perspective or a crew chief and what they were experiencing. So it is a very long process to even understand it based on that. And when there aren't answers that can be found in that binder, it makes it even more difficult. You know, when you're having to submit FOIA requests or submit additional questions to the Air Force or the Marine Corps, or, in our case, you know, using an attorney to try to get that information as well, it does prolong the grieving process and the suffering in some ways, while also giving a place for you to channel that grief into trying to make a difference and do something so that this doesn't happen to other families.

Drew F. Lawrence 

That delay in getting a clear picture of what happened rang true with the Australia investigation too. For a year, Spencer Collart’s family did not know he survived the initial impact, and heroically re-entered the wreckage to try and save others.

Bart Collart 

I mean, the biggest thing for us was the fact that Spencer didn't, wasn't killed in the initial crash when that was the thing that just blew us all away…It definitely- it impacted our grieving process. I think Spencer, because he chose to go back onto the airplane and jump into the burning aircraft to save his friends. It was his choice. It was his decision. It wasn't just something that happened to him that he had no control over, and so I think in that regard, it actually kind of made us feel better about it that, I mean, he died a horrible death. Let's face it, right. It's just that's no way I would want to go but, but at least it was his choice, and he decided to jump back in there and do the right thing.

Drew F. Lawrence 

While Collart now has more answers as to what happened to his son, questions remain about the safety of the aircraft. The military says that it is working on fixes for the known mechanical issue, the hard clutch engagement problem. It has had months of pauses of V-22 flights after these incidents, where pilots and crew brush up on procedures while the Osprey’s sit and wait to fly again. Right now, there are still some limitations on flight for the aircraft, but they’re still in the air all the time. And that worries people. It worries the families who have lost loved ones about the safety of this aircraft.

Bart Collart 

We know, all these people are still in this aircraft, you know, using it every single week, you know so it still worries us….And then that's the thing about the Osprey that still bothers me about it is that, you know, why is it crashing seems to be the only thing that comes after something bad happens. There's no parachutes, there's no – what do you- auto rotation like you could get with a helicopter. The thing can’t glide. So what is the backup? It seems there's so many things that can go wrong with it, then why isn't there some other kind of backup thing that can happen if, if the worst happens, that maybe people have a better chance of surviving?

Drew F. Lawrence 

Thank you for listening to this episode of Fire Watch. Thank you to our guests, as well as executive producers Zach Fryer-Biggs and Jared Keller. If you enjoyed this episode, and want to let us know, give us a rating, wherever your get your podcasts. And as always, thanks for listening.