Well There‘s Your Problem - Episode 38: V-22 Osprey

Episode Date: August 21, 2020

ha ha tilt rotor go brrrr *crashes* LISTEN TO HELL OF A WAY TO DIE: https://soundcloud.com/hellofawaytodie DONATE TO BAIL FUNDS AND ETC AND PROVIDE THE RECEIPT TO US VIA TWITTER OR E-MAIL AND WE WILL SEND YOU THE BONUS EPISODES: https://www.phillybailfund.org/ https://www.communityjusticeexchange.org/nbfn-directory https://secure.actblue.com/donate/bail_funds_george_floyd https://secure.actblue.com/donate/ms_blm_homepage_2019 E-MAIL IS IN THE CHANNEL ABOUT PAGE OR: DUBYA TEE WHY PEE POD AT GEE MAIL DOT COM!!! SLIDES: https://youtu.be/2bvltmNno_A patreon: https://www.patreon.com/wtyppod

I think that means we're good. All right. Hello and welcome to, well, there's your what a hell of a way to problem. Yes. Yes. Welcome to the Nate Pathay crossover extended universe of vendors infinity war. This is true. You know, I made with lines led by Donkeys last week and just continuing on. I made one time in our discord, I made like I found this picture of like an octopus.

Like an octopus over Europe holding different European countries. And I put Nate's face on it. And then on the octopus arms, a bunch of like the different podcasts. And then somebody was like, you know, that's like a horribly racist cartoon. Right. And I was like, well. Yeah. The original octopus was a Jewish octopus, which I mean, considering that I am in fact Jewish does make sense,

but it's probably not a good thing to do. Also, one of the shows you put on there, I had to drop because they brought on it. I like an expert on 9 11, who was just like an English teacher in Spain. He was like, oh, yeah, it was a controlled demolition. And I was like, I can't really produce your show anymore. Oh, okay. Complete the sacred. Did that as the other purchase on this podcast.

No, we did do 9 11. We got the message. I have to jump in with a foot with a funny quick story was that there was a guy when I was in Afghanistan who had gone to like grad school in Pakistan who worked in the governor's office and he spoke English. Okay. But not super great. And he would always come up to me with like, he wants to have important strategy discussions or whatever about Afghanistan, Pakistan.

And one time he came, he's like, I have important question. What? Tell me on September the 11th, why did all Jews stay home that day? All right. So we got a message from George Soros on our secret Jew walkie talkies. Yeah. So we got the message from George Soros on our secret Jew walkie talkies. And we got my logo back in 2001.

Yes. The Jewish people did 9 11, but by converting the, the airline hijackers to Judaism and then still letting them do it, which is impressive because normally it takes a long time. Yeah. You got to be dissuaded from it numerous times. The Jews in the building were actually load bearing. That's why they came down because they didn't show up to work.

Which is so funny when because if you actually one of the, the back stories of 9 11 that I remember hearing was that when people talk about like the Jews did 9 11 was there, but there was a guy on one of the flights who was a IDF veteran from sire at Mott call. And if I remember correctly hearing the story, he was like telling people on the flight, like, don't worry. I was in sire at Mott call. I'll handle this.

And didn't realize that one of the hijackers was just sitting in the seat behind him. I was like, Oh really? Okay. And then got a box cutter to the neck. So it was to say, I don't think, I don't think that it was a massage plot. But hey, you know what? That's not who?

Who am I to comment on these things? Did you not go to the last meeting? Hey, I guess not. And not a lot. Zoom call. It was a lot for a forever. It was a high school at the time. You know, I had just passed massage selection.

All right. All right. We have to do this. What? Welcome to well, there's your problem. A podcast about engineering disasters. With slides. Yes.

I'm Justin Rosniak. I'm the person who's talking right now. The pronouns are he and him. All right. Go. I'm Alice Corvo Calli. My pronouns are she and her. I'm the person who's talking right now.

I am Liam Anderson on my new microphone. My pronouns are he him. Thank you for all the people telling me that I no longer sound like dookie. My name is Nate Pathay. I am the co-host of what a hell of a way to die. I am not one of the hosts, but I was jumping in and filing in the way everyone else is doing. My pronouns are he him.

I'm also the co-host and producer of trash future podcast. And I'm Francis Horton. I'm the other half of what a hell of a way to die. General Lefty, not an actual general though. And he him. And yeah, we're, I'm excited. I'm excited to talk about military disasters of which there are so many. There's so many different ways for the military to be a horrible disaster

that I'm excited about one of them being design flaws rather than leadership flaws. Because normally we talk about leadership flaws. But now we're going to be like, well, what if we just invented something that just killed people? Like, but not the bad guys, the good guys, us. What if we did that? Tilt rotors just go out in every direction. When I first saw the slides, I was like, well, what if we did that?

When I first saw the slides for this, I thought that was a photo of you, Francis. I was like, Francis, were you wearing a marine uniform? Smoking a cigarette next to a crashed Osprey? That's like the advanced form of stealing valour is like stealing valour while you're in the military from another branch of the military. Just like Air Force Ribbonzy of no business having. There's some dumbass online on Twitter who loves to yell at people for stolen valour. And one time I asked him, I said, you know, it's incredible because I know you hate me

because I'm a leftist and I'm a veteran and I'm a 20 year veteran. So I'm retiring. But I'm surprised that you never really dug into like trying to prove me for stolen valour. And he's like, you like openly talk about how your public affairs. Nobody is trying to act cool by stealing valour from public affairs. That is a fair point. That'd be like if somebody was just like, yeah, man, I was a truck driver. I'm not going to like question that.

Nobody, nobody brags about being a truck driver in the army, but there are many truck drivers. So I managed to fly under his radar for that one. This is in the five minutes before your retirement packet gets approved. He comes out. He's like, why were you wearing the World War Two Antarctica Service Ribbon in your last year? I found it.

I found it. And I wanted it. You're not up to regs. Speaking of flying under the radar, you will see on the screen in front of you a very strange aircraft, which is blown very low under the radar and has in fact crashed. And there is a man smoking a cigarette and drinking a rip it in the foreground. When the first, when I saw this for the first time,

I thought that said sip it by the way. No, you don't sip those. You just drink quickly to prop your eyes. I remember the gas station near where I grew up. Used to sell ribbons for 75 cents. And I being a dark and moody teenager, I was like, oh yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to drink like 10 of them in one day. And I did.

And I just like, I felt like I was levitating out of my body. And I was like, is this how the army feels all the time? I love the fact that the rippets, like they never changed the design from the early 2000s. So that basically it looks like a static ex album cover. But the one thing that really blows my mind, I'll tell you really quickly in Afghanistan, it's obviously like a big thing with hospitality that you offer people,

drinks, food, et cetera, whenever there's a meeting. And a friend of mine one time went to a Shura in a village and the elders brought out basically like a bowl of pistachios, a bowl of raisins and a bowl of rippets that had been stolen. We heard these are your American customs. This is what you want. I love the, I always love the mythology that was around rippets because when you go to the gas station, you can get the 16 ounce rippets.

But in Iraq and Afghanistan, for some reason, we only had these like half cans, like we'd get these six ounce cans of rippets. So yeah, so you get them. But the mythology was just like, yeah, we're getting the good shit. You can't get back in the States. This has got like cocaine in it or something. Like they were just like, yeah, it's small because it's just too concentrated.

If you drank too many of them, you might die. So therefore that's why they're actually issues you an eight loco. They're like, hey guys, I hope you enjoy our efforts. If you took a, if you took a four lo, if you took a normal rippet and like you just evaporated most of the water off of it and then rubbed the syrup under gums, that's what we got here for you in the army. Yeah, it was depressing when I found out that they were made by the people who made Fago

because I thought they were like a military special only. But then I discovered later on, no, they're just shit to your energy drinks, which is what we give the troops. Well, we didn't have monster back then. In 2004, monster energy drinks weren't a thing. So we had to, we had to drink something and it was, it was rippets. They damn sure weren't going to buy Red Bull. So there it is.

But in addition to talking about rippets today, we're going to talk about military airplanes. Most specifically. Realizing that it's going to be even harder to keep this one on track than usual. Yeah, we're going to talk about the V-22 Osprey. And then the prime of its life. Got a mysterious kind of like oil stain down one side of it. That's probably fine.

But first we're going to do the goddamn news. OK, so we this is something this is something local. So the Army Corps of Engineers managed to wreck three barges into the interstate 676 bridge in Philly last week because they decided to delay dredging of the upper school because they didn't want to do it until eventually. I don't even know how they got forced into doing it eventually. The upper school was supposed to be like the Army Corps of Engineers

is supposed to dredge navigable waters. But the upper school was grandfathered in and when it needed dredging a couple years ago, they just said, well, we're not going to do that. Even though they're congressionally mandated to do that. And somehow they managed to strong arm them into finally dredging this year. But we also had a nasty storm. So the barges got loose and crashed into a bridge. Hell yeah, also strong.

I was hoping that the story was going to be that they had waited so long that like there was meter upon meter of silt just built up. So actually the river isn't that high. It's just it's just like 90 percent mud and 10 percent water. But storms slightly more plausible. Yeah, you just get out and walk across. That is also true. But what's what's your warrior?

It's just the five guys that have to dredge it like complaining endlessly. Yeah, once again, those guys are the kind of guys that like no one questions you stealing valor from if you can be like, yeah, I was in the Army Corps of Engineers, but all I did was like, not dredge the school and like crash a barge into a bridge. Nobody's going to like go through your metal. By bagging boats into stuff that boats shouldn't back into. No, that's just the Navy.

Marine Corps. Long story career. A long story career of basically doing drain cleaning on every navigable waterway in America. Look, OK, so I live near the Mississippi River. I've I've visited many a Army Corps of Engineer lock and dam because I am just a huge fucking nerd. And I love going to those places.

Usually they have a man. I got to play like a barge video game where they like rebuilt. They built the a barge like cat like a tugboat. Captain's area, I guess the the four deck and you get to drive a barge. The lock and dam is very exciting. That rules. That sounds fun. But barges barges on the Mississippi River are so wild because like

they're just like tied up all over the place because it's basically just a big floating. As you can see here, it's just a big floating hole that you fill the hole with things and you float it up and down the river. But like all up and down the Mississippi around St. Louis, there are just like wrecked barges on sand dunes that like when the river is up, you don't see it. But when the river is down, you just like, oh, there's that barge

that's just sitting there and nobody does anything about them. They're just like, well, it's off to the side. So we don't actually have to worry about it. Eventually it will rust away, I assume, even though these are barges and they're meant to be in the water. So one assumes that their rusting capabilities are very low. I'm just saying that that barges running into things and being wrecked is a perfectly normal thing.

And whether that should scare you or not, I don't know, but it is a normal thing. I mean, they go pretty slow. It's probably fine. Just hearing a beautiful, perfect like song. Yeah. I just think I'm now I'm now salivating at the thought of all those free barges on the Mississippi River.

I could get a barge anytime I want. I think that Mississippi River is the whole barge. I bet you could start up in Minneapolis or wherever the Mississippi River starts and just floats down. And by the time you get to Louisiana, you can have your own fleet as long as you're willing to like, you know, do a little, do a little, you know, buff out some rust fill up a couple of holes. And then all of a sudden you're running coal up and down in Mississippi.

You're a coal baron for free. Done. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Just patch it up with some Bondo. Yeah. You just go in the as seen on TV that like gorilla slap thing where he slaps it onto the big thing of water.

That's the big tank that's got water out and slaps it on there. Just do that to barges up and down the Mississippi River and you got a fleet. I was just going to say, make sure to not try to recover Grimes's old houseboat. It's not seaworthy. Oh, fuck. She tried to do exactly this without the coal baron part. I'd forgotten about that. And like my favorite part of the rice up for that, just to like close out our

news segment was they were interviewed for the local news because they got sighted, I think for like improper barge safety, like three times. And like it mentioned it because they had a bunch of geese on board. And it mentions like Grimes and her then boyfriend decided to try and do this on the basis of a very thin which neither of them had read. Do they name one of the geese and just like we're like, well, that's close enough. Good Lord. All right.

That that was the goddamn news. We're keeping it short today. Single item. Yeah. Yeah. In order to talk about the 22 Osprey, I think it's useful to start by asking what is helicopter? A scene here.

30,000 moving cars looking for a place to crash. Yeah. So ugly. The ground repels it. Beating air into submission. Every other helicopter joke. Alice, you got it. You got to drop some Dulwich College etymology on here because the etymology

of helicopter is one of the funniest things that no one is ever expecting in the English language. Oh yeah. It's people think that it's it's helicopter and it's not. It's helico and tur, which is like it's a it's a revolving bird. It's a spinny bird. Wow. Fair enough, I guess.

This is one of those things like I like when I mentioned a couple of episodes ago that restaurant doesn't have an N in it. People get really upset and that's one of those like upsetting facts that a private education buys. It's like that's like the parents thing. Yeah. Oh my God. All right.

So the first revolving bird was invented by Leonardo da Vinci. Right. There were some there were some like spinning tops that used helicopter principles in China as far back as 400 BC. Those were all children's toys. Da Vinci came up with this flying screw thing in the 1480s. He claimed to have made a working model, but that doesn't survive. The documentary Assassin's Creed Brotherhood for that.

Yeah. Now the one of the problems with, you know, this sort of design back in the 1480s is no one had invented an engine for them. Right. And horses were too heavy to power the screw. Right. You just have a guy on there cranking it. It's a vision of what that would look like even in like the demo version.

Giant hamster wheel that you just throw a horse into. Oh yeah. I'm on. We have to get off the ground. You want the camera? Yeah. The potential thrust to lift ratio of a horse is not very good. So there were some practical developments in like model helicopters in the 1860s.

Thomas Edison was paid to develop a sort of rotary aircraft in the 1880s with an internal combustion engine that he decided he'd try and power with gun cotton. Yes. Very. I love that back in the day. Like there are so there are very few smart people just because everybody was too busy trying to survive. So they would just go to like the one smart guy in the tri-state area and be like, hey

man, you made light bulbs. Can you make a helicopter? It is like, yeah, I'll give a whack at that. Why not? What the fuck else am I doing? You're the only person whose brain works and isn't like out of their gourd on Lordenham. You can pretty much do everything. Right.

So around 1901, there was a man named Herman Gansvit and he managed to pilot a helicopter off the ground in Berlin. That was actually two years before the Wright brothers figured out fixed wing flight, right? He developed this machine for, he was trying to make a plan for space travel, which would involve a spaceship that would be carried aloft by the helicopter and then it would fire up its engines to go further and those engines would be powered by dynamite, of course. We laugh at this, but at one point in time, there was a plan to make a rocket by putting nuclear bombs underneath it.

So this is just like the precursor to that. Oh yeah, it was, what's it called? Yeah, there's a lot of that like seven year period between like, hey, we dropped a nuclear bomb and hey, fallout is really bad. Those seven years made some really fucked up atomic plans and ideas there. Yeah, we could just like bed dig a canal using one of these things. Yes. The Soviets had a just like, what if we had good practical applications for nuclear bombs

like build digging a canal and turns out that this is a horrible idea, they'll figure. The fallout exists, yes. There's still like very slow development in rotorcraft development through the early half of the 20th century, right? No one figures out how to make a good practical helicopter, but we do get something called the auto gyro, right? Looking good. So Juan de la Sierra invents the auto gyro for the Spanish Air Force in 1923, right?

So the idea here is this rotor on top of this aircraft is unpowered, right? Okay, what he's done is he's put an enormous desk fan on top of a regular plane. Yes. And what this does is it allows for low speed flight, you know, because this rotor will auto rotate and provide a little extra lift so you can descend slower, you can fly slower, you know, that means you can chuck stuff out of the side of the aircraft like bombs easier, right? And there's less danger of stalling overall, right?

And, you know, there were developments from this auto gyros, you know, were improved with control surfaces on the rotor, but no one quite figured out a good way to come up with pre-rotation, right? No, just have a guy spin it. If you... Have a guy spin it. Well, that's one option, but they had to spin it pretty hard. You get a horse.

Yeah. Go back to that again. Well, the idea was they were trying to get pre-rotation so they could take off shorter as well as land on a shorter distance, right? That required a transmission that no one could quite figure out how to do. Huh. Also, laughing at the idea of a drive shaft going through your seat. Yes.

Just like just maneuver around it is fine. There's a big pair of wooden bevel gears right behind you. One of De La Sierra's auto gyros became the first rotor craft deployed in combat in 1934. That was for reconnaissance to put down the Asturian minor strike of 1934. Fucking everything. Like all of the weird like interwar technology just happened because of like labor wars. It's like, oh, we just invented like this way of dropping bombs on striking workers. Awesome.

This is this is like something consistent in the history of rotor craft is they are mostly used for killing leftists and communists. Helicopters are fucking fascist. God damn it. Helicopters are inherently fascist. Yes. All right, we go from the auto gyro. There were a few more developments, mostly by the Nazis in World War Two,

but we bomb their helicopter factories. Good enough. They couldn't really use them practically. Your first modern helicopter was developed by Igor Sikorsky, right? This is the Sikorsky R4. Seen here with seatbelts optional, like in shirtsleeves, just like hanging out the open door. I really do like this one. Yeah, just sitting here in a boat chair. I really like the formality of being a helicopter pilot.

You're like dad's hobby project. Yeah. Yeah, this is I mean, the shirt, the shirt and tie and slacks is the it's it's the uniform of the sweaty man working for the government in the 1950s and 1960s. Like everybody dressed this way. They all had weird mustaches. They all look like they were kind of child molesters, but instead they were actually building rockets and shit.

So this is this is normal. This is perfectly normal. You take the good with the bad. Igor Sikorsky on the right, that looks like he should be played by specifically J.K. Simmons character in Oz. Like just real, real depraved shit, which the helicopter. So to the focus where we insult the legacy of the whole circuit.

And I will start some problems. It's a Korsky factor. I don't know where it is. I'll be like, the guy who started this is a loser and J.K. This is a. Hold off. Oh, yeah, you show up drunk at what you think is the Sikorsky plant, but it's actually dynamics, electric boat and they then they they cart you off to

some kind of black site wherever they put my dad in college. Oh, yeah. So this is the first helicopter that has sort of the modern format right? You have your big rotor up top here, right? And then you have a small rotor at the end on a tail, right? And the reason you do that is to prevent counter rotation, right? Because one of the problems is is that the motor inside the helicopter can it can spin the blades, but it just as easily the blades could remain

stationary and the helicopter could start spinning, right? Kind of the opposite of what you want. Everyone gets dizzy. Yes. Also crashes into the ground. Yeah, so you have your little rotor on the back to add some force, thrust, perpendicular to the actual helicopter itself to stop that from happening. And as we saw in Black Hawk Down, when that little guy stops working,

then you have big, spinny problems. Yes. This was powered by a big, heavy piston engine and your real development, creating the modern, modern helicopter is adding turbine engines, right? So this is the Aerospatial Allowet 2, right? They they put a light turbine engine on there. And now we have our modern helicopter here in the mid 50s, right? Just got the mash theme song.

You also had that looks a lot like a like a Bell H 13, which was the first Kazovac helicopter it was used in Korea. And hilariously, it also had skids and they just put stretchers on the skids on the outside of the aircraft. And don't fall off. Yeah, I've seen some artwork where it looks like they've put nice little windshields for the casualties so that birds and shit don't hit them. But, you know, it's the mash helicopters.

You see how they do that. They strap you on the sides and then they drop you off. The doctors take you off and you go on back out. Yeah, we we we saved his leg, but unfortunately, nothing we could do about the hearing. And you get to know this and you get to know this. We we've actually determined that people live long and fruitful lives with birds embedded in their foreheads.

The casualty arrives like faster, but lightly sandblasted. It looks smooth. It looks smooth. Doesn't it look smooth? All right. So helicopters start getting real big, real quick. So, for instance, we're going to talk about a little bit is this is the CH-53C stallion, another Sikorsky helicopter, which is developed for this this military group called the US Marines. Right. Fractag a bunch of like plucky outsiders.

A bunch of nerdy wells. Yes. So, you know, this this was first flown in 1964. You can see how big helicopters got how quickly. It's got two big turbine engines, one on each side with six rotor blades. You know, it's for heavy lifting, very fast, 1,100 nautical miles of range, blah, blah, blah, out of service in 2012, replaced by the Super Stallion. Now they're making an even bigger one called the King's Stallion. It's sort of, you know, workhorse, heavy lift helicopter, fairly reliable.

You know, it's weird that it's a workhorse, but they call it the stallion. Yeah, I like it, though. It's a good aesthetic. Like it's very like, I don't know, it's gray brown. That's the paint I like. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It reminds me of like it's a it's a miniature version of the mill MI 26 in a way, which if you like that aesthetic, imagine that times five. But yeah, I mean, it's as I understand it, it's the biggest, if not at parity with the CH 47 for American rotary wing aircraft.

Yeah, I mean, I know that I know the Russians went bigger and like created an impractically large helicopter. Yeah, that's the MI 26. I've seen photos where they used one to sling load a broken CH 47 in Afghanistan. It literally bottom loaded an entire huge cargo helicopter from another helicopter that's bigger rules. All right. So one of the things about helicopters is when we use them in incredibly complicated operations.

It always works very well. And that's why Jimmy Carter got two times. All right. Did I write the slide? No, I did. I wrote the slide. Although feel free to interrupt me with extra details. So you may be familiar with the fact that is that Iran is an Islamic Republic. And you may also be familiar with like, if you remember, like yard sale t-shirts about the Ayatollah that he took a bunch of hostages in the American Embassy.

And one of the things that the Castro administration wanted to do about this was to like get get tactical with it, do some some special forces, Delta Force and end the crisis by force, by flying in a bunch of guys from the army into a base in the middle of the desert that they would create called Desert One. Yeah. The CIA would get them into Tehran. They would storm the embassy, free the hostages and escape. In order to do this, you need a couple of C 130s, transport aircraft and a bunch of those sea stallions that we saw earlier.

And they set off with eight. And I think five get there because each of them suffers like a separate independent mechanical problem, like one of the roller blades cracks, one of the hydraulic systems goes wrong. According to plan, then. Yeah, exactly. And so this incredibly like finicky, like Swiss watch kind of plan with a lot of moving parts immediately starts to like unravel.

You you see on the right that like there are a bunch of Iranian dudes in a modern photo just hanging out next to a sea stallion. That's because they had to leave it in the desert and they didn't really bother to destroy it. So it's just kind of still there. This is this is reminiscent of when they did the the assault on a bad about to get that they lost that one up. Right. You and and it seems like for any of these is like, all right,

we need to take like seven helicopters and there'd be some lieutenants somewhere like, well, don't we only need to look at these are coming back. So you always have to assume at least four of them are going to crash just because their pieces of shit. I can't I can't I can't give you anything else. L T. That's all we got. And that that's exactly what happened. And so they had to they ended up having to abort this.

They they literally they got on the radio and it went all the way up to Carter and he was like, no, you can't do it with four helicopters come home. So they had to refuel and they were sitting in the desert in desert one. This this airstrip they created with the engines idling in like the middle of a sandstorm. They have to have an Air Force combat controller try to like maneuver one of these helicopters into refuel. He gets so sandblasted by the downdraft from this helicopter that he like he takes a step or two backwards, which you don't want to do

because then with no other points of visual reference, the pilot thinks, ah, I am moving backwards, I have to correct for this and move forwards and flies into the C 130 kills like eight people. I think massive explosion, huge debacle. And yeah, no, it all goes horribly wrong. I was just going to say that this is actually also the inciting incident for why the US Army created Delta Force or what's now called CAG or SFOD Delta a cross border insertion raid force, which didn't get used on Bin Laden

because the head of the Department of Defense Special Operations Command was a seal and he was just like, nope, we're doing seals from the water. Doesn't matter. We're doing seals and that's why they crashed helicopter. If Delta operators wanted to get the good jobs, they should have written more books with ties with like honor of courage duty. No, I'm going to get all my boys a book deal. None of your boys are going to get a book deal. I'm still struck by the seal who claimed to have killed Bin Laden

is now like writing this for Twitter clout and is like tweeting that the last thing that the son of Bin Laden saw was the like American flag on his shoulder rule. Just like, yeah, OK, so here's the thing, right? Is like that's you can you can just stop any time, man. And what we do is basically he's the army version of Uncle Rico just keeps talking about like the one one one pass he did in senior year of high school and he's just living in that is just like 11 years later.

It's just like, did I ever tell you about how it killed Bin Laden? It's like, oh, yes, there was this funny. There was this stupid funnier dies kit in like 2012 about the guy like being sworn to secrecy and then like in the next scene, he's in the bar. He's like, I fucking shot Bin Laden. Like that would at least be cool if McHoo. Yeah, whatever the fuck that guy's name and just did that. But instead, he just does it like, yeah, he just does cringe posts about it.

He just I'm wasting for the the tell all book by the dog. So in in this operation where they took seven helicopters and managed to wreck one into an airplane. The Iranians, by the way, still have two of them. Two of them are like they repaired two of these sea stallions and the Iranian Navy still operates them, which is just the biggest flex I can imagine. I don't understand why they need seven helicopters to go in and out, you know, and they lose two of them when your local news station

can like report on traffic every day with one. Well, your local news station doesn't typically have to fly through a small fire. I think is the problem. Unless you're a North Philly, which is sometimes. But I will say this much, it's very important to bear this in mind for the future story, because if the inciting incident for the V-22 Osprey was brown out and sand is bad, that will become very important when you learn about what the V-22 Osprey actually does.

Yeah. But yeah, so having fixed and rotary wing aircraft working right next to each other obviously has some problems. So, you know, that we come up with this idea of why not do both in one platform, right? Now, oddly enough, this had been experimented with before. Ugly looking thing I've ever seen. This is the this is the Leng Temco Vought XC-142, first flown 1964, right? An elegant name.

It's supposed to be an aircraft, a tilt rotor aircraft for all branches of the military. But the Marines decided it wouldn't be ready in time, so they pulled out. No imagination. And then eventually, yeah. And eventually, you know, the whole whole project was canceled. It had a few successful test flights, also one of them crashed and killed some people. Yeah, you win some, you lose some. You win some.

Cool NASA livery, though. Oh, yeah, I think NASA used it for a long time. For people who grew up in the 80s and early 90s, this basically looks like your transformer toy stopped folding back the way it's supposed to. So your theoretical features to tilt, router, you know, it can take off vertically like a helicopter, right? But it also can go fast horizontally like an airplane, right? And when it's got a wing assisting with lift, you know, that's more efficient than

having a real fast propeller, right? More range, more speed, less fuel. Your main problem with this aircraft was rather than was there was one motor, one turbine in the middle of the plane of the aircraft, whatever you call it. And then there was just a prop shaft that went down the length of the wing. Oh, so we've actually gone back to the auto thing of just like having your seat bisected by a drive shaft.

Yeah, exactly. So, you know, on this drive shaft caused it just an ass loader of vibration made it difficult to fly. Awesome. Wait, does that mean I had to go through the cabin as well? Yeah, just be trying to like you're just in the back and there's a like spinning drive shaft like a head height. I probably looked a lot like, you know, those old belt driven machinery halls. You know, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So all right, this one didn't go anywhere. But from this, we, you know, enough research was, you know, discovered, you know, to start working on the Osprey. Which after Eagle Claw, the Marines decide, actually, we do want this tilt rotor aircraft. And we have we have like kept entirely in keeping with Eagle Secorsi's legacy of just leaning out the side of the aircraft whenever you feel like it.

Oh, yeah, you just stick your head out like your dog. That's actually how they navigate. No, bro, you got to go left here. Just like leaning out the window. They don't have rear view mirrors. So if they back up, someone has to stick their head out the side. It's like to have to parallel park my V-22 tail. You're signaling someone to pull over.

I'm just I don't know what role this was meant to fill. Like the helicopter and this is this is typical military engineering where they'll like just come up with a like, what if we had this scenario that doesn't exist and they'll be like, well, let's build a helicopter. Let's build something around that. Let's build something around this idea. And you get this, which is like, OK, it can, you know, what can it do? It can take off from an aircraft carrier.

Sure, I guess. And then it can go farther than a helicopter. But like there are so many like, I know, just so many weird design flaws in this. And I don't I just don't understand what the like, it's like the F-35, right? In theory, when you write down on papers, like I want an airplane that can do A, B, C and D. And you're like, cool, we can make that. And instead, you make an airplane that affixiates the pilot and catches on fire. The answer to a question nobody asked.

Right. And and I I interviewed a journalist who specializes in the F-35. And she told me, she's like, well, the F-35 did a lot of things that, you know, are very ambitious and, you know, there's there's good things that it can do. But yes, also it affixiates the pilot sometimes and sometimes catches on fire. And and it's just like it's fulfilling this this role that nobody needs fulfilled because like our greatest enemy, like who's our greatest enemy is Russia. And they have one aircraft carrier that they can't stop, you know, catching on fire or dropping cranes on.

So like, you know, the next the next biggest like threat we have is China. And China makes too much money off of us to bomb us. So like, what exactly is this for other than to crash in a desert somewhere and then have like a bunch of, you know, skinny, fourteen year old teenagers with AK-47s hit it with rocks because they're bored out of their minds and there's nothing else to do. So then Chuck rocks at the crash, the crashed military vehicles out here in Iraq. You know, in Afghanistan, there's there's plenty of Russian aircraft graveyards.

And I just I'm thinking of like once we leave, like all the the army shit that's just going to get piled on top of all the Russian, like transport planes and stuff like on Bagram. Were you ever on Bagram? Did you spend time on Bagram at all? I was definitely on Bagram. And yeah, there's lots and lots of old Kamaz trucks and some tanks and just some rusted out shit. Yeah. Yeah. I'm looking forward to like by by the time we're eventually,

you know, expelled from Afghanistan one way or another and just a bunch of like CH-47s and, you know, busted up Blackhawks. And we're just like, I don't know, we didn't I don't want to take it home. It's too it's too expensive. Just leave it here. And the the Afghans only just put it on the fucking pile, I guess. Next. Well, one of the theories I heard of why the V-22 existed was partially

so the Marines could justify their continued existence. Oh, yeah. Because there was this like an evergreen proposal that kept going around and like some presidents were more interested in than others. That the army should just eat the Marine Corps. Out of 100 percent get rid of the Marines. Absolutely no reason for wet soldiers. Just make soldiers that are wet.

God damn it. The fuck is the point of this? The fuck is the point of the Marines? Let's let's be honest. They're not even a branch of the army of the military. They are part of the Navy. They are just wet soldiers. I tell them that all the time.

OK, fuck their cult. I don't care. Marines, my ass rides in Navy equipment, I know. I feel like a lot of the reason why the Marines have remained around is like this kind of psychological value because politicians think that they're tougher. And so it's yeah. So it's like this whole thing now of like like braver than the Marines or whatever. Yeah, well, the Marines, the reason why you do keep the Marines around

is because at some point in time, maybe we need to start convincing people to strap bombs to themselves and throw themselves into a place. And that would be the Marines. The Marines would be the easiest ones to be just be like, bro, just get into this tank. We're going to strap in full of explosives. You're going to run the tank in there and it's going to set off like basically a small nuclear detonation.

But let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Those pussies, you're fucking all right, man. I'm going to be over here taking pictures as public affairs. That's the fuck I do. Good luck, boys. One thing that I also think is worth mentioning is that this factors into the story of the Osprey is that the Marines synergy with politicians

and their incredibly strong lobbying forces within various fucking branches of the US government is such that even when you have what will later be affectionately referred to as the elevator of death by actual Marines in production or in testing and constantly killing people, doesn't matter because senior enough people in politics want it because I do say the Marines are tougher somehow. And my one Marine anecdote and I do not I do not know if this is factual, but there's something that was reported to me that makes a lot of sense

is that in Marine doctrine, the smallest maneuver element, which is to say the smallest element of people who can move around in groups, basically, is the battalion. Everything under a frontal assault, just fucking frontal assault. Just do it nonstop. By comparison in the army, I mean, you can basically maneuver with individuals or at least two man fire teams. So it's a mentality.

And I feel like that explains a lot. Well, the Colts got to bring the Colt with them. Yeah, they have cool uniforms, right? Like the army had to like bring back the 1940s style pinks and greens because senior officers were getting upset that like politicians were falling over Marines and they're kind of like retro looking uniforms. And they thought they looked like Cato aces. So, you know, I get it, right?

It's good branding. I will say of all the you see people driving, you know, driving around. It's always it's always like a 2004 GMC Yukon that just has like the Marine Corps emblem and they're flying a Marine Corps flag at just like the I served hats. And it's always it's always it's always the Marines. It's always I never see anyone who was just like, yeah, fuck. Yeah, that's right. I was in the air force.

Like my GMC Yukon four hundred and fifty times. You're like, hey, man, were you in the Marines? Marines, Marines love to serve for four years in the Marines and then never shut the fuck up about it for the rest of their entire natural lives about how they were a Marine. And like oftentimes I asked these people, like, if you loved it so much, why the fuck did you get out? And there's always like, you spent four years getting haste so bad.

You spent four years getting haste so bad that they made you grow a mustache so you could use it to clean a toilet. And you're like, that was one of those in retrospect is like it was great. Like, was it though? I mean, you guys, you know, they just beat you with socks full of soap. Like for fun. How was that fun? They sent you to Paris Island and shoved you in a washing machine. Yeah, killed that guy. Yeah.

Yeah, that's that's like a fucking bucket of laps. Good Lord. All right. Who wouldn't do that to you? The fucking Air Force. No, the Air Force would never. Yeah. No, but I know a guy who almost got kicked out of Air Force basic training because he couldn't fold his towels correctly. And that's what the Air Force is 100 percent about.

If you cannot fold a fucking towel exactly within specifications, you will not allow to wear that uniform. It's the right stuff. But for remembering the phrase fast, neat, average, friendly, good, good. All right. So December 1982, the Marines issue a request for proposals for a tilt rotor aircraft, you know, so. And they award it to a consortium of Boeing,

Vertaul and Bell Helicopter over there because a Bell helicopter had actually done a tilt rotor before. And Boeing was like, well, we'll jump on this. So this was developed from an earlier prototype. They eliminated the power by driveshaft in favor of putting individual turbines on each nacelle here to power each of these very large propellers, right? There's still a horizontal driveshaft that goes across

in case one of the engines fails. You can have the other engine power both. I'm good. Yeah. But now it now it's like at least it's not spinning at head height now. Yeah. So what does this do? All right. So it's a tilt rotor. It converts from this comical looking helicopter into sort of a plane with comically large propellers, right?

In about 12 seconds, the rotors also fold up so you can stick it on an aircraft carrier, which means they're smaller than they should be, which means when it takes off, there's a bunch of extra pressure on the surface where they take off their flight decks. Oh, yeah, they're bad for flight decks. Apparently, if you're trying to do like ocean rescue, the the downwash can just like drown the person.

You're trying to rescue the waves to you as you drown. Yes. Yeah. So I feel like that's a detail that's that's hilarious, worth exploring. I need to figure out, see the actual figures. But if I remember correctly, the V-22 Osprey's downdraft at like at its hover speed is the the speed or that they the the speed of the air that it generates or the force it generates is a hundred and forty. Two miles an hour.

That's a god damn hundred and forty knots. It's faster than the speed that a C one thirty flies at when it throws paratroopers out the back like I'm dead serious. And, you know, I really I've I've, you know, loaded on to running helicopters before I've had to, you know, be there when the helicopter lands, run on to the helicopter and the helicopter takes off. You know, that downwash is pretty, you know, what what we always have to take a knee, turn away from the thing, put, you know, a hand in front of your face.

And, you know, you get hit with some rocks and some gravel and stuff. But in general, you're fine, no, no lasting damage. I'm just really wondering, like if you had to do like a touch and go where the this thing touches down and then you've got to load on to it. Like is it one of those like one of those comical, like, you know, somebody trying to walk in wind and they're just like really pushing up against it. Just holding on to a pole and then you're like horizontal on the pole because the wind is so big.

You take your helmet off and it turns it inside out like an umbrella. Like your your your rifle goes flying and like embeds itself into the wall like barrel first turns inside out like an umbrella. So go that that that shouldn't work like that. The bullets fly out of the magazine so fast, like faster than actual bullets and start killing people. All right, it also serves the purpose of gun. Nice. OK, this is real multi-tasker.

Um, now some of them have machine guns on them. Some of them have something called the interim defense weapon system, which is like a little turret on the bottom, right? You can use them to carry things, right? So looking very like powerful there, lifting a sort of lightened humvee. Yeah, exactly. Wait, so looking at that, yeah. So it's got two points of attachment.

So it's basically it can sling load the same way that a CH-47 can. I don't have the spec sheet to know how much it's max sling load capacity is. But I have this feeling that you probably don't want to be using. It certainly can't do that. I imagine when it's in in forward drive, I can, you know, plane mode. So how this is better than a CH-47, I don't know. I do know that a CH-47's max lift capacity is, I think, something along the lines of like 22,000 pounds.

So if it's not better, then this is just like a cool gizmo that it can do when it's being a transformer. But that's that's procurement for you. You can show that off to like a stand full of officers. And they're like, oh, it's very impressive. Right. Like if you if you don't know what you're looking at, when you look at this picture, you're like, that looks kind of impressive. But when you look at a humvee that's completely stripped down,

which we don't even use anymore, we don't use humvees any longer. With with no armor, no, not even like a hard shell back top. It's this this thing is this is like a pickup truck. They even took the doors out. It took a seat. Right. I'm I'm really curious if we pop the hood when we find an engine in there. We're going to do this off this deck. It looks like this is probably Hawaii in the back of these are Marines or Okinawa.

You know, so so it's this nice picturesque thing. And it's really this proves nothing. This proves like me looking at this is like congratulations. All I can see is nobody can be near this thing. And you can bring me a useless piece of equipment. Congratulations. It's entirely possible. Depending on that model of Humvee, I'm not sure what it is, but cargo back Humvee or a troop carrier Humvee that's not up armoured.

I absolutely know for a fact from looking at that that a UH 60 Black Hawk could carry that, depending on how heavy and what that model of that Humvee is, it's entirely possible that a UH one Huey could carry it to. So the company wheels, this is the exactly it wouldn't look as cool. But I was just going to say, as as the person who actually did go to Pathfinder School, this is I mean, I'm glad it works. There's a part of me that's like, is that is that an airfield or is that an aircraft carrier? Because the idea of like, we have a Humvee on an aircraft carrier is hilarious to me.

But it's just driving around. Exactly. Drive from one end of the flight. That's shop truck. Well, well, to be to be fair, the the Marines Park LAVs on the decks of aircraft carriers, because aircraft carriers have no way of like shooting speedboats full of explosives. So they have to put like, basically a wheeled vehicle with a 30 millimeter gun on the deck to shoot at things in the water, because aircraft carriers can't defend against that. And I imagine they just tell the guys who are in the up guns on those trucks,

like just make sure you put your chalk box in because of a V 22. Lance is going to blow your vehicle off the deck. We've turned an aircraft carrier into a glorified row, row, ferry. I do like the idea of flying around with a Humvee under you and just sort of using it as a wrecking ball. Just like. Who could find it? I have I have that. That's that's going to be the best idea for the next like any.

I want to make a military movie now specifically built around that scene. I don't care what the plot is, but I do need there to be an Osprey with a sling loaded Humvee. And they're like, we didn't load the ammo. What are we going to do? And like the you look over to the grizzled Warren officer who's piloting is like, you know what to do. And then they just start mowing down terrorists with a wrecking ball Humvee. We can make this somehow.

I don't care what about the rest of the movie. The government and Jack Ryan, they can fund us too. Let's go, boys. Banner, get on it. All right. So in addition to lifting stuff and maybe wrecking balling stuff, people can also jump out of it. Or this slide in just upset me specifically.

Yeah. So I went up to two things I want to point out. Number one, those guys on the left are doing a halo or maybe a hey ho insertion, which is not a common thing. I mean, obviously it's a special ops mission, but that's not a common paratrooper thing. If this plane can do static line paratroop operations, which is where you're connected to the aircraft basically in the cable going

tight or taught, deploys your parachute. Cool. But in a way, it seems kind of efficient inefficient, because if I remember correctly, this thing can only carry 24 people and it doesn't look like you can go out particularly quickly because there's there's no there aren't troop doors on either side of the aircraft. So you can only go off the back ramp. I just have a feeling having jumped off the back ramp of a CH 47 before and it's it's kind of scary and it's not for beginners.

I just feel like this this could be a little bit weird. I mean, I guess, but also I'm really wondering what is its minimum speed in this configuration, because depending on if you do are doing static line operations, it would be hilarious if this thing wound up being more painful than a cargo jet. As for the right, you mentioned you mentioned the troop doors. It does. So it has one on the starboard side that they can't use

because the downforce from the road is too high. Yeah, I just oh my God. And then with regard to the fast roping after after hearing about how incredibly strong the downdraft is, I'm I can see why that guy in the foreground of the picture is running as fast as he fucking came away. And also, I'm just going to say for a demonstration that feels, I don't know, look at the proportions there. That seems kind of high.

Like that's just I mean, OK, I haven't I haven't really done this that much. But I'm just saying like there's a part of me that looks at that. It's just like this can only be done in like a field at Camp Adderbury, Indiana, wherever the fuck that is, because anywhere else, it's too dangerous. And like, you know, it's just just shits blowing everywhere. Like people are falling off the rope. It's Blackhawk down first 20 minutes over and over again.

It just looks dangerous. Like there's one good. There's one thing I'm going to point out about, you know, these two pictures and then the picture we were looking at earlier with the Humvee. You notice how beautiful the sky is. That's literally the only way that these fucking things operate. You need some Thomas Kincaid ass pair of situations to be able to deal with this.

Yeah, looking at this, I'm just like, would not want to do either of these. Just like I don't want to. I didn't jump out of airplanes just in general because it seems silly. But like jumping out of helicopter sounds even dumber. And and no, it's nice because they don't go as they don't go as fast. And so when you jump out of helicopters, you jump a little bit higher and it's going slower. So the opening shock of your parachute is actually relatively comfortable.

And depending on the the aircraft, oftentimes the units that you're like the groups you're jumping in are smaller, so there's just fewer people out there. Also jumping out of helicopters like the take off to drop time tends to be shorter if you're doing training stuff as opposed to like with fixed wing aircraft where no shit you can be, you know, rigged for a mock combat jump with all your shit for like eight fucking hours waiting on the aircraft and refueling and loading and flying and shit. So jumping out of helicopters is fun.

But this seems like it's taking the worst of both worlds. And it's just like they've managed to make military parachuting, which sucks already, suck worse. Well, in addition to jumping out of it, you can also in flight refuel it. Oh, God, speaking of looking danger, that looks like a mistake. I just love the rotors like that. It's just like, hi, I'm a real airplane, too. I'm a real airplane, too.

There's literally only one thing that I can think of when I see that picture, which is do not talk to me or my son ever again. My large tail roasts up. Don't worry, boy, one day, one day your other rotors will come in. Do you mean it, dad? He he he he he hit a growth spurt early. Don't make fun of it. Waiting for my other tilt rotors to drop.

Yeah, it's a C one 30 with a two atary gland problem. Man, yeah, just looking at that, I'm not going to pretend I know how in flight refueling works, but I am laughing at the idea that it's just sort of like, OK, so this thing. At a glance, this seems uncomfortably close. That's all I'm saying. The rosa tip. The rosa tip looks like I mean, I know that's a forced perspective film, but yeah, it's not to share that thing right off.

Oh, we'll get to that. Oh, boy. So all right. So there were some funding and development issues with the Osprey as a military. Yes, incredibly. Sometimes military procurement isn't that good. Just just keep making the A 10. OK, that's all I'm asking. It's good at its job.

We don't need the F 35 to do it. Did they did they say that it was going to cost one thing and then it ended up costing not that thing? Yes, imagine this. It was the other thing higher than the first thing. Yes, a lot. Was it by a lot? It was by a couple of whole numbers, maybe.

So first keep rounding up, just keep wrapping up. They start developing the first prototypes in 1983. They start calling it the Osprey in 1985. In 1988, the first prototypes entered testing and the army pulled out of the program. That's the reaction that you want. If you do the first prototype in the army is like, no, thank you. No, we are going to we are going to take our ball and go home.

Thank you. 1990, 1989, the Senate tried to defund the Osprey twice. Dick Cheney tried to defund it as well. Wow, critical support. Yeah. Noted. Yeah. Noted the hero of the people. No, no, to dove Dick Cheney. It's like, yeah, no, I think the military is like spending too much money on this.

He gets overruled by Congress. 1994, the prototype testing ends. Bell and Boeing are awarded a contract for actual production Ospreys, right? Only took 11 years. Yeah, 11 years into the program so far, right? Further testing and evaluation was slow, plagued by frequent setbacks. And of course, just a couple of crashes. Oh, boy. Yeah, it's gone.

Yeah, the beautiful the beautiful thing about the Osprey is that if you're in an airplane and your engines die, you still have lift from your from your wings. And, you know, jet airplanes not so much, but, you know, a commercial airliner can belly land pretty easily. I think it's that with engines with engines down like on a 737, you've got 12 feet of forward versus one foot of down. And with jets, it's like one to one. It's basically a 45 degree nose down into the.

But, you know, you can inject out of that when a helicopter's engines, you know, stop the the force of, you know, you of the helicopter going down, keeps the rotors going so you can, you know, hit the ground and it'll be a bump. It'll be a hell of a bump, but it's survivable. Like, you know, you can walk away from that and the helicopter doesn't burst into flames. The Osprey takes both of those safety features and just gets the fuck rid of them. Neither one of them would work, even in the, you know, where the rotors are up when it's in helicopter mode, the way that the rotors rotate completely negates

the downforce, so you will still hard land in a exploding kind of way, depending on how high up you are. And of course, when it's in jet airplane or whatever fucking airplane mode that it's in, the rotors are too fucking big. So you have no, like, real lift when you're gliding forward. So basically, if anything happens to the engines, you're fucked in this thing and you can't, it's there's no ejection seats in a helicopter. So yeah, they go down a lot.

They have a timed ejection seat that, you know, goes through the rotors. I think some of the Russian attack helicopters have those, like one of the camoffs has not an ejection seat, but an ejection cabin where we're like detonate the rotors and then shoot the entire like the entire cabin bit up off the aircraft. It was relatedly Mercedes put out a car a few years ago that had going doors. And if you flipped it because you're a moron person, the way because obviously you can't open going doors or upside down,

it had explosive bolts in the door. So just literally blow the doors off so you can get out. And I do love in this in this picture at top, right? The guy taking a photo and absolutely trash us. Like that's like it's like it's like the commercials where someone's like taking a picture to send to their insurance company. It's just like he's just like, yeah, boss, you're not going to believe what happened out there today.

Let me send you a snapchat. It's just like this guy like a frowny face filter. The way I read it is like looking at his like expression and his stance there. I read that is that's going in my cringe compilation. I've seen that up on my Instagram stories with Mad World by Gary Jules playing in the background. Also, also, I'm very into the Tyvek suited guy in the bottom left

who is doing the Virgin walk around and burn down. All right, so there's a lot of incidents here, right? We'll start with the one in July 1992, right? This is there was a pre-production Osprey on a demonstration flight in front of a bunch of congressmen at the Marine base in Quantico, right on the Potomac River, right south of Washington, DC. And yeah, there was there's an engine failure.

And I guess the second engine with the drive shaft failed to kick in and a crash into the Potomac River right in front of congressmen killed seven Marines. Also, a flying start, I guess. Not literally a flying start. I would do it as a joke about how quickly something could get canceled. And yet it persists, right? That's because cancel culture isn't real.

Yeah. The stick to it is important. All I can ever think of is the pig roast in the Simpsons with successive bad things happening to it. It's just a little airborne. It's still good. It's still good. It's just like this happens like 25 times. And the Marines, it feels like instead of saying it's still good, it's just

but it's still cool. It's still cool. It's a plane and helicopter. It's still cool. But it's just fucking incinerating entire platoons of Marines, apparently. All right. So our big, our big famous incident is in 2000. And we have to sort of explain some helicopter dynamics here. We have to use a picture of a Comanche, a cooler aircraft. Yes, in order to explain this. All right. So now in 2000,

there was a simulated nighttime rescue mission which was going to land at Marana Northwest Regional Airport in Arizona, right? So they're trying to do a nighttime landing at an airport. OK, real difficult stuff, right? And one of the Ospreys pilots realized they were coming into the airport too high. So they increased their rate of descent to compensate for the being at the wrong altitude, right?

And one of the rotors on the Osprey entered something called a vortex ring state, right? So the vortex ring state is when your rate of descent is too high. The helicopter is going down too quickly, right? So instead of air being forced down and out by the rotor, instead, the air is forced down. It swings back up and then it goes through again. Now, all the air is going in the sort of doughnut pattern around the rotor, right? The forbidden doughnut, yes. Yes.

And this is a vicious cycle, right? As as the as you go down faster, the doughnut gets stronger, you make less lift, which means you go down faster, right? The best way to get out of it is, of course, to go forward. You know, then you can move into clean air and this this cycle will stop, right? Wasn't this also the thing that took out the stealth black hawk and the bin Laden raid? I have no idea. Possibly. I mean, it's a black hawk.

We call him Crash Hawks for a reason. So one of the rotors in this on the Osprey entered a vortex ring state, which meant the aircraft rolled over. The pilot lost control, smashed in the ground, nose first. All 19 Marines on board were killed. Yeah. So there was a two month moratorium on testing the aircraft. The Marines blame it on human error. And they said the Oscar is very easy when it fucking kills everyone.

Oh, yeah. No survivors. Then later that year, another one crashed and killed four Marines in December in Jacksonville because of a hydraulic leak. And one of the things that's notable about this aircraft is how there is a huge number of incidents for just a wide variety of unconnected reasons. Thank you. It's not like it's not like the comet where there's like, oh, it's the shape of the windows. It's like every different part of this seems to like be able to go wrong

in a way that destroys like a platoon of Marines. Yeah. So March 2006, right? That was a uncommanded engine acceleration while taxiing. Oh, this is my favorite one. Yeah, they they they they wired the factory wired the engine control wrongly. And they fucking switched the thing in the wrong direction. And so when he tried to the pilot tried to turn one of the engines down to zero, he got maximum acceleration in that.

You think someone would have noticed that before? You would hope you would really hope. And yet. April 2010 was a crash near Kalat in Afghanistan. Walat, I don't know how to pronounce that. It killed four unknown cause aircraft destroyed. April 2012, two Marines killed when an Osprey crashed in Morocco. I didn't know what that one was exactly.

June 2012, the Osprey flew through a prop wash from another aircraft during a training exercise that crashed injured five people. May 2015, that was a dust intake accident. Hawaii, the right engine failed. Hard landing fire, two Marines killed. Notably, non dusty places, Afghanistan and Iraq. Yeah. December 2016, Osprey Rotor Blade hits in flight refueling hose. I told you that would fucking happen.

We all looked at the picture once and were like, man, that seems really close to the refueling hose. It crashed on a reef half a mile offshore of Okinawa, two injured. So I guess they were they started getting better at crash landing these without killing people. Practice makes perfect. August 2017, an Osprey crashed into the USS Green Bay shortly after taking off from another ship. God damn Viking fans, man.

Yeah, three Marines dead. Oh, sorry. Yeah, yikes. September 2017, hard landing in Syria, two injuries. Aircraft destroyed afterwards. So we don't know what happened there. Yeah, like, look at all these accidents and like, are these design flaws or is it all is it all human error or what's going on?

How we're coming back to Operation Eagleclaw, right, where the original emphasis for this design is we need something that can fly in the sand and like work very closely with other aircraft. And then to at least two of these crashes are it got sand in it and it got too close to other aircraft. I don't I just especially with whatever the hundred and forty mile an hour downwind or whatever it does, like so it just creates a dust storm all by itself. It feels like and if you.

Yeah, I feel like revisiting the whole thing with Desert One. It's like, yeah, we need to be able to fly in dust. And from an article that Francis found from the website, war is boring. The the author assesses it as such. He says, the problems compound a notoriously unforgiving aircraft. The Osprey is almost impossible to land in a brownout situation, which dust and dirt envelop the cockpit to have any chance in a brownout. A V-22 crew has to use advanced avionics and an infrared camera.

A conventional helicopter can manage brownout with high tech assistance, making it much safer. So basically, it's more dangerous than a normal helicopter in the conditions it was built. We literally have solved this problem by making it worse and more expensive. Literally, the answer to a question nobody asked, which was what if what if helicopter, but also turboprop? And you just you don't need to do this, man. Helicopters are fine.

I mean, they're not, but they're fine. I just I once again, the United States military and their search for endless nonsense baffles me. Amazingly, also, it bears mentioned that you adjusted in prices for the aircraft. This was supposed for inflation. The aircraft this was supposed to replace the C 53 would cost, I think, like $11 million per aircraft in, you know, inflation adjusted dollars, whereas the Osprey costs $100 million per aircraft.

I would I would honestly rather just get nine C 53s. I don't care. I'd fly all of them at once as one aircraft. I'll glue them together if I have to. Exactly. It's just just just whatever problem. We're going to get a tank and we're going to sling load it by connecting it to nine C 53s. We're just going to fly it and it's going to solve it that way.

Can you imagine? Coming over to the horizon and be like, I'm going to I'm going to shoot. I don't know. I'm going to shoot the US military today. And then suddenly there's nine tanks being wrecking balled into you. In which Liam invents the new doctrine for the 21st century. You finally figure out what to do with all those softballed tanks. Yeah, load them down with explosives. Use them as projectiles.

Yeah, I wonder maybe that would be a good way to do it. Another good way to do it would be to put the tank on a trebuchet. Yeah, another thing about the Osprey is if you ask the Marines, you look at official records. This is a very reliable and cost effective aircraft, right? Oh, we're going to talk about Odin, my favorite dude. I just found I didn't actually write down anything about Odin beyond like there's been a lot of incidents of maintenance records being falsified.

Jesus Christ. Yeah, boy. Why? What they did, what they did was they dismissed a Marine. I think he was a Lieutenant Colonel named. Fuck. Hold on. Let me find this. Yeah, Lieutenant Colonel Odin Lieberman, commander of the V-22 Squadron at Marine Corps Air Station, New River, relieved of juicy after allegations that he instructed his unit to falsify maintenance records to make the Osprey appear more reliable.

And I should clarify, the maintenance target was that 80 percent of the fleet be operational at any one time. And what he got busted for was trying to get that number up to 50. There was famously in the Osprey sort of saga, there was an allegation that they were just regarding any ground incidents, safety problems with the aircraft and their defense was, well, that's also how the Navy calculates its safety records with regard to aircraft. This is like, you're not really filling me with confidence here.

Look, if it happens on the ground, it's not an aircraft problem. It's a ground problem. What this reminds me of is the famously the New York City subway has terrible, terrible on time, like like a scheduled departure records. Like their their best line, I think as its peak was getting like 91 percent on time, but most of the lines are in like the 60 to 70 percent range. And the way the New York City subway or the MTA defines on time is within five minutes before or after the scheduled departure.

And they're still only hitting 60 or 70 percent. There was a joke about how the Japanese since records have been kept in the Japanese to the Tokyo Extended Subway Network. Uh, basically, if you applied that standard to Tokyo's records for on time departures, no train has ever been late in Tokyo ever. And that to me is like, it's the same sort of thing. It's like, even with the most generous fucking standards. It's just like, oh, yeah, 50 is my cheat goal.

My point about that is that SEPTA actually gives themselves a six minute window before or after just like, of course they do. And there are a bunch of lines that are still like, yeah, like 65 percent. And I'm just like, 12 minutes total is that like that's not on time, man. Like you own the track. You have no excuse. You have you own it. You could just put the trains there.

Oh, my God. Uh, yeah, I knew this is going to default into train chat eventually. So. But, you know, one of the things about the Osprey, of course, is, you know, it's not what you may be excited to learn that you too may soon fly in an Osprey because the civilian version is coming out local roofing office. I just ask that scores is ever seen, baby.

That's the the the the in partnership with with an Italian aircraft manufacturer, which had a bunch of different names, but is now called Leonardo. Exciting sign. Yeah. Bell is trying to basically get a civilian variant of this out on the market. And now the civilian variant is going to be pressurized and have a cruising altitude of like 25,000 feet. It's supposed to have 650 650 nautical miles range without additional.

Like I think you have to have fuel external fuel pods for a longer range, which their marketing is basically within the same ballpark as your standard VIP private jet flight. Apparently, Mike Bloomberg really wants one and he's been on the waiting list since 2012. It's also obviously. I do want to be in a V. And they call it the 69.

Yes. Yeah. And so in order to achieve, yeah, I think as I mentioned earlier that the cabin would be pressurized and so that if you're used to flying in a helicopter would probably be a little quieter, a little more comfortable, but still. I have no idea how you're going to sell this. I think the whole point here is to try to. Yeah, my conspiracy theory is that all of this is that even if they can just

get because apparently the United Arab Emirates is buying them for and I'm putting scare quotes around this search and rescue missions, I think the whole plan here is just so that that number for cost per unit for the Marine Corps is not eyewateringly high. I'm, but also one thing to bear in mind is that selling it as a civilian model for once again, search and rescue allows the manufacturers to get around export restrictions to countries with dodgy records when it comes to what they use military aircraft for.

Yeah, we're going to rescue some dissidents right out of the back of this thing. I did like to put the notes, the throwing Donkey Kong style barrels at the remnants of Yemeni school buses. They're going to sling load the Donkey Kong style barrels at the Yemeni school buses. I mean, listen, the best, the best possible outcome is that the UAE buys these in order to like ferry shipments of white Dior belt back and forth. I was just going to jump in and say there was a really funny aspect to this

too, is that another thing that the Marine Corps and the Navy are trying to use this aircraft for, you know, the Department of Defense Marine Corps lobbying arm is also trying to use the V-22 to replace aircraft that are used for onboard delivery for aircraft carriers. However, and just a quick anecdote, if you were to load up a V-22 Osprey with the same amount of cargo that a C2 cargo plane from the sixties can use, you know, for aircraft carrier onboard delivery, you would basically reduce a 2000 mile range of the C2 to about 50 miles because in order to carry

that much cargo, you'd have to sling load it. It would be a wrecking ball slash Donkey Kong barrel. So does it work as a cargo jet or a cargo plane? No, I love to get hit by a giant sling load of all of my ships mail and then washed over the side of the flight deck. Sorry, Alice. So to summarize so far, I mean, it seems that it can only go 50 miles if it's loaded to the cargo capacity of the current planes that have been

around for over 50 years. It crashes a lot. It crashes the helicopter. It crashes as a plane. It melts flight decks. It blows people off decks. Yeah, it took it to an air show in 2010 in New York City. And it just like blew people around really bad.

This is just an anchor for people on the ground. Yeah, well, I'm up here and you're down there. Stop shoving yourself. Stop shoving yourself. Yeah, let's not forget that it will. It'll drown a person if it's hovering over them while they're in the water. Oh, and they use them for presidential stuff also because VMX one, the the Marine helicopter squadron that does Marine one,

the helicopter, the president gets to fly around and uses these in like a nasty sort of green and white livery that they use as like support aircraft. I don't know if they've ever actually flown VIPs on them yet. Maybe that's like your punishment if you hang somebody in the chief of staff. So one of the one of the funny details from that article that Francis found that I thought was amazing, too, is the fact that, you know, a lot obviously back to the Desert One, invading Iran combat combat sort of insertion sort of thing.

One of the problems that this aircraft has is, well, it's flying in helicopter mode. It flies too fast for close or what's it called? An attack weapons team of A H 64s or A H ones to keep up with. So it's too fast for combat helicopters or attack helicopters. It's also in fixed wing mode or rotary like forward propulsion mode. It is too slow for an AC 130 or an A 10. If you do a combat mission, you can't defend this with any other aircraft besides V 22. It's self replicating.

You just got one of us, one of us, one of us. What you've got to do is you've got to do some kind of an AV 22 gunship where you just like start putting more guns on it. I can see no problems with this. The rotors are guns. Everything is guns. Well, I mean, one of the things that's amazing about the AC 130 is that I mean, it's a C 130, you know, cargo prop plane with like all sorts of ridiculous

armaments on it to include, if I'm not mistaken, a hundred and five millimeter howitzer, which is a lot of fucking force and recoil for this. This is, you know, a prop plane with four propellers. I'm just imagining that there's some undiscovered law of physics that's like the donut of death you were describing previously that like if you shoot a howitzer with one of these, like a new rotor pattern will just knock it out. Yeah, just like load a howitzer onto the like background of one of these and see what happens, you know, how bad can it be?

We'll find a brand new way to run one of these into the ground. Yes. In our hearts, all we wanted was something as as effective as the Kamikaze planes of World War Two and by God, you found it. USA, USA, USA. Right as you know, is diving to a ditch. But thank God you have you can land nicely on your hundred and five millimeter howitzer. Nice balance there.

Yeah, maybe that's what you used. You point the howitzer to the ground. So when you start crashing, you use the force, the upward force of a howitzer blast to keep you from getting too hard of a way to tank your GTA. Yes, exactly. You use the tank to the tank loader to make yourself go faster. Well, one of the things that also makes me laugh, too, is that you then ask yourself the question, well, OK, it's huge boondoggle waste of money,

tens of billions of dollars, hundred million per aircraft. It sucks at crashes. It's incredibly unsafe. All its various civilian applications are probably boondoggles. But does it at least develop a technology that can then later be used for civilian applications like every other military boondoggle? Apparently, the answer is no. It's constantly killing people in ways that we absolutely knew were going to happen.

We need to go back to the day when the when the military would be like, we invented this thing. Oh, now you can cook burritos with it. It's called a microwave oven. Like now it's now it's just all like the the military has already given us all like the good shit. And now it's just like, what do you like? Do you like a helicopter airplane or an airplane helicopter? No. Well, would you like to die? Would you like to die faster?

Did you say yes? Great news. I said no. You said yes. It is, everyone. Yeah. So what we have in the end is just maybe they'll have a civilian version. So Mike Bloomberg can get to D.C. faster. That seems to be one of the niche applications, according to the article, is like, oh, well, you can get from New York City to Washington, D.C. in an hour. Replacing the Osella.

I the Osella can carry a lot more people than this thing. I'm also laughing at the idea of like what kind of structural damage to something that melts aircraft carrier decks due to, like, the helicopter of a civilian building is like the way that you do 9 11 with a V 22 Osprey, so you melt the building from the top. You just sort of fly close to it. I'm just thinking I'm just thinking that that that that guy leaning out the side of the Osprey, but he's got like an unlit cigarette.

He's just pressing it against the engine compartment to light it. I forgot my light. Hold on. I got to I got to lay my butt off of the engines. Well, that's the V 22 Osprey. Yeah. And we're going to do a second part at some point soon with Francis and Nate about military aircraft procurement in general, which is going to be a fun time. We can talk about star fighters just like plowing Germans into fields.

I'm I'm especially excited to talk about the Comanche helicopter because people who live in the UK know there was a viral, fake news, unsubstantiated, lasagna, what's that WhatsApp chat message that was going around in the early days of covid, basically saying that the British government was spreading covid around London with Comanche helicopters that they would be flying around at night doing this. And it's like, well, there's two of them and they're in a museum in fucking Kentucky, I think. So how that's working, I have no idea.

But we'll find out in that bonus episode. Yeah. And that will be available on our bonus feed, on Hell of a Waste. That is bonus feeds. This should be available on both of our regular feeds. So it's a crossover episode and we hope you've enjoyed it. Yes. Yeah, come come listen to our stuff if you like more military things. This has been eventually I'm going to come back on to talk about Lustron houses with Alice. Yes, please do.

I don't know what that is. That like the steel house. Yeah, steel panels. Nice. Oh, that'll be fun. All right. Do we want to try and do safety third? Because I didn't put anything anywhere for that. I think it's I think we can probably skip it this time. All right. Do another one.

That sounds good. So I got to I got to run. So OK, in that case, our next episode will, of course, be on the Tacoma Narrows Bridge disaster. That's right. Yes. And does anyone have any commercials before we go? Listen to Hella voice a diet rules. Yes. Get on our Patreon, HellaVoy2Die.com

for our writings and our store. The Patreon has all of our bonus stuff. We do one bonus episode every week with interviews and movie reviews. And sometimes Nate and I just get on and do dad chat because we're both old and falling apart. So if that's if that's up your alley for some reason, have I got a fucking bonus feed for you? Oh, yeah. And we even do a little bit of previews

in the beginning of our episodes where we do some dad chat. And in fact, a friend of ours recommended our show to a veteran friends of his who was who was also a lefty guy. And the guy very frantically texted his friend back and was like, did I mix this up? Is there another hell of a way to die? That's just about gardening. That's our show.

I subscribe to this for leftist military stuff. And instead, all I'm learning is how to grill. All right. Well, anyway, thank you so much for having us on, guys. No problem. It was great. It was fun. We should do this more. No. Yeah. I'm all about coming on to talk about failed military.

Like, that's literally our our thing is how how big of a failure the military is. But if we can deep dive it into like mechanical problems, not necessarily just like the culture. That is also that's a brand new place to go. Yes. Yes. All right. Bye, everybody. Yeah. All right. Goodbye. Here we did it. We made an episode.