Osprey Pilot At MacDill AirFest Long Wanted To Fly Tilt-Wing Bird

Posted Nov 6, 2011 by Howard Altman

Updated Nov 6, 2011 at 12:50 PM

Matthew Burton was a 17-year-old living in Oklahoma when the V-22 Osprey program, already beset by two fatal crashes that killed 23 Marines, came under federal scrutiny.

That was back in 2001 and even Dick Cheney had been calling for an end to the then 15-year-old research and development of a tilt-wing aircraft that could take off like a helicopter and fly like a plane.

Fast forward to Sat., Nov. 5, 2011.

AirFest 2011 at MacDill Air Force Base.

Burton, in his green Air Force jump suit, is standing next to an Osprey on display. Though the bird he is showing off has never been deployed, Burton has. Now an Air Force captain and aircraft commander, he’s flown dozens of missions in Afghanistan as part of the Air Force Special Operations Command, transporting spec ops forces into battle zones.

Burton, who recently turned 28, says that ever since training to become a pilot, he wanted to fly the Osprey.

“It can fly higher and faster than a helicopter and deliver and pick up troops in half the time it takes a helicopter.”

Those capabilities, he says, make the Osprey less vulnerable to enemy fire on the way to a mission and give crews a faster response time.

Despite the problems during development, the Osprey has proven to be “outstanding” downrange, says Burton, who trusts his life and the lives of his crew and passengers to the revolutionary design.

Not that it has been flawless.

Last year, an Osprey crashed in Afghanistan and investigators came to differing conclusions what happened that led to four deaths.

“I think they knew they were going down and they had some kind of power problem,” chief investigator Brig. Gen. Donald Harvel said in an interview with the Star-Telegram after the official Air Force report was released.

“I find the preponderance of the evidence ... does not support a determination of engine loss as a substantially contributing factor,” Lt. Gen. Kurt Cichowski, vice commander of Air Force Special Operations Command, wrote in a response that stands as the official Air Force position, according to the paper.

For what it’s worth, there were nearly 30 helicopter crashes in Afghanistan since 2009, most of them the result of accidents, according to a report in USA Today.

Twenty-nine helicopters have crashed in Afghanistan since January 2009 through mid-September, the records show. Insurgents shot down six helicopters, including one other Chinook, a hulking aircraft that can hold nearly 40 servicemembers.

“It’s just a fact of life that helicopters are accident prone,” said John Pike, executive director of Globalsecurity.org, a defense policy group.