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.