WHEN THE MARINES decided to buy a helicopter-airplane hybrid
"tiltrotor" called the V-22 Osprey, they saw it as their dream
machine. The tiltrotor was the aviation equivalent of finding the
Northwest Passage: an aircraft able to take off, land, and hover
with the agility of a helicopter yet fly as fast and as far as an
airplane. Many predicted it would reshape civilian aviation. The
Marines saw it as key to their very survival.
By 2000, the Osprey was nine years late and billions over budget,
bedeviled by technological hurdles, business rivalries, and an epic
political battle over whether to build it at all. Opponents called
it one of the worst boondoggles in Pentagon history. The Marines
were eager to put it into service anyway. Then two crashes killed
twenty- three Marines. They still refused to abandon the Osprey,
even after the Corps' own proud reputation was tarnished by a
national scandal over accusations that a commander had ordered
subordinates to lie about the aircraft's problems.
Based on in-depth research and hundreds of interviews, "The Dream
Machine" recounts the Marines' quarter-century struggle to get the
Osprey into combat. Whittle takes the reader from the halls of the
Pentagon and Congress to the war zone of Iraq, from the engineer's
drafting table to the cockpits of the civilian and Marine pilots
who risked their lives flying the Osprey--and sometimes lost them.
He reveals the methods, motives, and obsessions of those who
designed, sold, bought, flew, and fought for the tiltrotor. These
stories, including never before published eyewitness accounts of
the crashes that made the Osprey notorious, not only chronicle an
extraordinary chapter in Marine Corps history, but also provide a
fascinating look at a machine that could still revolutionize air
travel.
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