The Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey has been a revolutionary aircraft since its first flight on March 19, 1989.
The Osprey was the first operational military tiltrotor, an aircraft capable of behaving like a helicopter when taking off and landing, while also flying like a fixed-wing aircraft. This is made possible by its two Rolls-Royce T406-AD-400 tiltrotor engines, each equipped with a three-bladed rotor with a diameter of 12 metres.
The Osprey currently has very few operators. It is only used by the US Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, and the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force. Since 1991, the V-22 has been involved in 25 accidents, which has generated some controversy about the aircraft. The most recent of these accidents occurred on November 29, 2023, when a USAF CV-22B Osprey crashed into the sea near Yakushima Island, Japan, killing all eight people on board the convertiplane.
Following the accident, The US and Japan grounded their Osprey fleets for three months until they found out what went wrong. The results of the investigation were known in August 2024.
This Saturday, Real Engineering posted an excellent video about this aircraft and the accident in question, taking a detailed look at how the Osprey works and what went wrong with the CV-22B that crashed near Yakushima. The video also compares the Osprey crashes to those of two famous helicopters, the UH-60 Black Hawk and the CH-47 Chinook, noting that these two aircraft have been experiencing a higher accident and fatality ratio than the tiltrotor:
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Main photo: DVIDShub.net. A U.S. Marine Corps MV-22B Osprey flies over Al Anbar province, Iraq, November 10, 2007.
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