Bell-Boeing V-22 Osprey
Book Excerpt:
The Short Life of Aircraft Five
The only flight of the Osprey's fifth prototype lasted less than two minutes, and it was one wild ride.
January 25, 2011 |
By Richard Whittle
January Book Club Selection: The Dream Machine
A new "untold history" of the V-22 asks: Is the Osprey safe?
January 24, 2011 |
By The Editors
![<b><i>Writer and photographer Ed Darack</b></i> spent time in December 2009 with Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 261 (VMM-261) in southern Afghanistan. In addition to Darack’s story, “Osprey at War,” featured in our April / May issue, we offer a slideshow of images taking during his stay.
<br><br>“The pilots put the tip lights on for safety during nighttime and at dawn and dusk,” says Darack. “They just started this one up—you can see the plume of white smoke.”
<br><br>Many of the Osprey pilots used to fly the Boeing CH-46 Sea Knight, known colloquially to the Marines as the “Phrog.” “Basically, coming from the CH-46, I felt safe in the Phrog because it had two .50-caliber machine guns,” says Captain Chris Meixell of VMM-261, “but with this airframe, we have triple-redundant flight controls, and those controls are routed in different parts of the airframe. The engines are 46 feet apart, which decreases the chances of both of them getting shot out by enemy fire, and [the MV-22] can climb to 9,000 feet in airplane mode on one engine. The fuel system is a suction type system, and if you take a round, it is just going to suck air, it is not going to spray fuel. The greatest safety advantage is the performance of the aircraft itself, which allows us to climb quickly out of small-arms and shoulder-launched surface-to-air missile range.”](http://media.airspacemag.com/images/200*133/Osprey--4.jpg)
A Tiltrotor Squadron in Afghanistan
Scenes of a Marine unit flying the incredible, versatile Osprey.
March 15, 2010 |
By Rebecca Maksel
Tiltrotors for the Rest of Us
An Osprey for commuters? Bring it on. Can we get a quiet car too?
September 2009 |
By Mark Wolverton
Extreme Machine
The U.S. Marine Corps' sword gets a brand-new edge.
November 1998 |
By George C. Larson
