Wednesday, May 20, 2015

ANOTHER U.S. MARINE HAS DIED OF INJURIES HE SUFFERED WHEN AN MV-22B OSPREY HYBRID MILITARY AIRCRAFT CRASHED LAST WEEKEND DURING A TRAINING EXERCISE IN HAWAII.















MAY 20, 2015

HONOLULU (AP)

A second Marine has died of injuries he suffered when a hybrid military aircraft crashed last weekend during a training exercise in Hawaii, the Marine Corps said Wednesday.

Capt. Brian Block said in a statement that the Marine's family has been notified, and his identity will be released later. The crash also killed Lance Cpl. Joshua Barron, 24, of Spokane, Washington.

The MV-22B Osprey, which can fly like a helicopter and a fixed-wing airplane, went down Sunday at a military base outside Honolulu with 21 Marines and a Navy corpsman on board. Two other Marines are still hospitalized in stable condition, Block said.

The Osprey had taken off from the USS Essex, a Navy ship 100 miles offshore. It was flying to Oahu to drop off infantry Marines for training on land, said Block, a spokesman for the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, which is based in Camp Pendleton, California.

The crash didn't stop the unit's exercises, Block said. The Marines also don't plan to ground their fleet of Ospreys, despite calls to do so from the governor of Okinawa, Japan, where many of the aircraft are based.

The Ospreys are taking part this week in the inaugural U.S. Pacific Command Amphibious Leaders Symposium at Bellows Air Force Station on Oahu. However, the training exercise that included the crash was not part of that event.

The Osprey is a tilt-rotor aircraft that can take off and land like a helicopter but flies like an airplane, which gives it a longer range than traditional helicopters.

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FORT SHAFTER, Hawaii — Four Marines remained hospitalized Monday — one in critical condition — a day after the crash of an MV-22 Osprey on Oahu with 22 people on board, the Marine Corps said in a statement.

A fifth Marine who died in Sunday’s crash was identified as Lance Cpl. Joshua E. Barron, of Spokane, Wash., according to local news reports. The tiltrotor crew chief was 24 years old. He was assigned to marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 161. 

Three of those who are still being treated were listed in stable condition. The 17 other Marines aboard were treated and released.

Barron’s mother, Michele Barron, told The Associated Press that her son loved his job and was proud of what he did. Describing him as her “superhero,” she said he joined the Marines because “he just wanted to do something more with his life.”

The crew chief attended University High School in Spokane and Spokane Community College.

The Osprey was from the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit and was operating at Marine Corps Training Area-Bellows, flying from the USS Essex to deliver a group of Marines for training on land.

The 15th MEU, based at Camp Pendleton, Calif., will continue its sustainment training exercises, which are expected to conclude Thursday, before continuing its deployment to the Pacific Command and Central Command areas of responsibility, the Marine Corps said.

The 15th MEU departed San Diego on May 10 for the seven-month deployment.
Kimberly Hynd told The Associated Press that she was hiking the Lanikai Pillbox Trail on Sunday morning and had seen three Ospreys maneuvering in the hills around Bellows.

She then saw smoke and fire rising from the distance but did not hear a crash.
“It looked like they were doing some sort of maneuver or formation — and so I was taking pictures of it because usually you can’t see them that close up,” Hynd told AP.

Ospreys are equipped with tiltrotors, allowing them to land and take off vertically as helicopters do, but then fly like a fixed-wing aircraft.

The Osprey has been used in Afghanistan and Iraq. The U.S. has a fleet of them on Okinawa and recently announced that 10 more would be stationed at Yokota Air Base in Tokyo, with the first to arrive in 2017.

Some Okinawans have protested the arrival of Ospreys, claiming they aren’t safe because of fatal accidents during its early years.

Okinawa Gov. Takeshi Onaga on Monday demanded that all Osprey flights be suspended on the island until the cause of the crash was determined, according to Japan’s Kyodo news service.

Onaga plans to visit Hawaii at the end of this month to meet with Hawaii Gov. David Ige in hopes of enlisting him in his quest to prevent construction of a new U.S. base on Okinawa.

The cause of the crash remains under investigation.


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After fatal crash, Marines say Osprey aircraft has good safety record

May 19, 2015

HONOLULU — A military plane crash that killed a Marine and injured several other service members during a training exercise in Hawaii has renewed safety concerns about the Marine Corps' new airplane-and-helicopter hybrid.

But the Marines say the MV-22 Osprey has proven itself to be safe despite high-profile accidents early in its operation.

The aircraft went down Sunday at a military base outside Honolulu with 21 Marines and a Navy corpsman on board. The crash killed Marine Lance Cpl. Joshua Barron, 24, of Spokane, Washington, and critically injured another. Three Marines were still hospitalized in stable condition on Monday.

The governor of Okinawa in southern Japan immediately called for all Osprey flights to be suspended in his area until the cause of the crash is determined. The U.S. operates 24 Ospreys on Okinawa and announced a week ago that 10 more would be deployed to Yokota Air Base near Tokyo beginning in 2017.

The Osprey that crashed had taken off from the USS Essex, a Navy ship 100 miles offshore. It was flying to Oahu to drop off infantry Marines for training on land, said Capt. Brian Block, a spokesman for the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit.

The crash didn't stop the unit's exercises, Block said. The Marines also don't plan to ground their fleet of Ospreys.

"We're continuing to train in order to make sure we remain sharp and ready for whatever comes up during deployment," he said.

The unit, which is based in Camp Pendleton, California, recently left for a seven-month deployment to the Pacific and the Middle East and was in Hawaii for about a week of training.

The Osprey is built by Boeing Co. and Bell, a unit of Textron Inc., and the program was nearly scrapped after a history of mechanical failures and two test crashes that killed 23 Marines in 2000.

Those crashes led the Marine Corps to work to train pilots and eliminate sources of risk, said Loren Thompson, an analyst at the Lexington Institute, a think tank based in Virginia.

The aircraft also has features that make it safer than normal helicopters, like rotors that automatically collapse on landing to reduce the dangers of a hard landing, Thompson said.

The Osprey has deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan since its introduction to the fleet. The Marine Corps has been using it the Himalayas this month to help with earthquake disaster relief in Nepal.

For every 100,000 flight hours, the Osprey has had 3.2 mishaps involving loss of life or damage exceeding $2 million, Marine spokesman Capt. Ty Balzer said in an email. That compares with a rate of 2.98 per 100,000 flight hours for the CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters the Ospreys are replacing.

Balzer said the difference is small considering the large number flight hours involved.

The Osprey had the lowest serious-mishap rate of all Marine rotorcraft in the first 200,000 flight hours of its existence, he said. The MV-22 has now been in the air for a total of 223,000 flight hours, Balzer said.

Sunday's crash was a tragedy but wouldn't slow down the Osprey "because the aircraft has proven itself in combat," said Thompson, the think tank analyst.

It can take off and land like a helicopter, allowing it to go almost anywhere. Yet it can also fly as far and as fast as an airplane, giving it longer range than a traditional helicopter. That made the Osprey the aircraft of choice when Marines rescued a downed Air Force pilot from a remote area of Libya in 2011.

Sunday's crash wasn't related to a symposium on amphibious landings involving defense leaders from 23 nations in Hawaii this week. Ospreys will participate in a demonstration of an amphibious landing for the symposium at Bellows Air Force Station on Tuesday.