Failure™ Magazine

The Dream Machine

The untold history of the notorious V-22 Osprey.

Written by Jason Zasky   Filed under History, Science & Technology

A V-22 flies over the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of North Carolina. (Cover photo from “The Dream Machine.”)

Mother Nature’s osprey is an aquatic bird of prey. It hovers over water, dives to catch fish, then takes off vertically and zips to shore, where it pauses to devour its catch. The United States military’s Osprey is also capable of hovering, diving, taking off vertically, and flying fast. But with a “flyaway cost” of $64 million (Marine Corps version) and $76 million (Air Force version), the armed services’ Osprey mostly consumes money. When one considers the R&D investment, the technological challenges of developing a VSTOL (vertical and short takeoff and landing) aircraft, repeated political assaults on the program, and the bad press suffered in the wake of multiple fatal accidents, it’s remarkable that the Osprey survived a quarter-century long struggle to reach the battlefield.

In “The Dream Machine: The Untold History of the Notorious V-22 Osprey” (Simon & Schuster), veteran military and aviation writer Richard Whittle examines the tortured history of this revolutionary hybrid aircraft. Most notably, the book includes previously unreported details concerning the deadly test crashes that nearly doomed the program. Earlier this month, I spoke with Whittle by phone about the Osprey, our conversation focusing on the myriad crashes, and the prospects for utilizing tiltrotor technology in civilian and commercial aircraft.

What makes the Osprey unique?
The Osprey is a tiltrotor, meaning it has rotors out on its wingtips that it uses to take off and land—like a helicopter. But once it gets airborne it tilts those rotors forward and flies like an airplane. It’s one solution to what I call the search for aviation’s Holy Grail, which began in the 1930s. Even then people were looking for a way to make an airplane that could, as one engineer put it, do substantially everything a bird can do.

The problem with creating that kind of aircraft has always been that you need two different kinds of thrust—vertical thrust and horizontal thrust—which adds extra equipment, extra weight, and extra drag. The tiltrotor is an elegant solution because you have only one mechanism to create thrust, and it transforms itself from vertical to horizontal thrust.

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