Local congressman fights for truth about Osprey crash in 2000
RALEIGH (WTVD) -- The search for answers into the loss of a Marine who fell from an Osprey aircraft Monday night is just beginning.
The ABC11 I-Team has been investigating the Osprey for years, and so has North Carolina Congressman Walter Jones.
Jones has become an Osprey watchdog, of sorts. For years, he's been leading a crusade to clear the names of the two pilots who were at the controls of the most deadly Osprey accident in history. The crash killed 19 Marines back in 2000.
Jones is digging for answers into Monday's mishap. As it turns out, he's making headway in his longtime crusade -- 12 years now -- trying to clear the names of those two pilots.
The V-22 Osprey is half-plane and half-helicopter. These days, it's held up as one of the Marine Corps' safer planes, which raises more questions about what happened Monday.
"They all wear the safety belts," said Jones.
Jones said he's been trying to get answers all day. The fact that the Marine should have been tethered in is not sitting well.
"Obviously, this man knew that going up," said Jones. "So, I don't know if a belt might have broken or might have been other than an accident. We don't know at this point. That's what they're trying to figure out."
Jones has taken a personal interest in the Osprey for the last 12 years. The deadliest accident in the plane's history drew him in.
"It's almost like a stall," said Jones. "So then that plane starts turning over and over."
About two years ago, the I-Team exposed what Jones still calls a wrong that needs to be made right.
On April 8, 2000 during a nighttime training exercise in Arizona, an Osprey crashed in the desert, killing all 19 Marines on board.
The pilots -- Lt. Col. John Brow and Maj. Brooks Gruber -- were lumped in to the Marine Corps' official explanation of what went wrong.
"The press release that followed the accident specifically stated, I believe it said 'apparently' the pilots' rush to complete the mission was the fatal cause of the accident," said Connie Gruber, the wife of Maj. Gruber.
However, after multiple investigations, inspectors say they know what caused that plane to crash -- something called vortex ring state. It's a flying condition that, at the time, wasn't understood, or factored in to the pilot's training.
"It was an unknown to the Marine Corps," said Jones. "It was an unknown to Bell Helicopter. So therefore, the unknown could not be explained to how to handle the unknown. They were not trained for it."
For more than a decade, Jones has been fighting to get the pilots' names cleared for the record, and for their families.
"They were serving their country and they deserve to be honored," said Trish Brow, the wife of Lt. Col. John Brow. "They don't deserve to have their reputations left behind on the battlefield."
After that crash in 2000, the military began studying vortex ring state in Ospreys. They put warning systems in the planes, and they are safer today because of it.
For Jones, that's all the more reason to keep up the fight.
"So what happened to those two pilots never would have happened, and the 17 in the back of the plane who were also killed with the two pilots," said Jones. "That today would not happen, that kind of accident, because they have a warning system."
Jones says he has a meeting with Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel's office in a couple weeks to find some resolution for these families.
In the meantime, Jones says, he will keep looking into the accident in Bladen County to see if the plane was to blame, or if it was human error.
