For 11 years, Connie Gruber and Trish Brow have lived in the shadow of a tragedy and with a stigma they would like to erase.
Their late husbands, Marine pilots Maj. Brooks Gruber and Lt. Col. John Brow, each with an exemplary record, were at the controls the night of April 8, 2000, when the MV-22 Osprey they were attempting to land in Marana, Ariz., suddenly rolled uncontrollably, crashed and exploded. All 19 Marines aboard died.It wasn't long before the official finger of blame was pointed at Brow and Gruber. A "combination of human factors" -- a series of mistakes and misjudgments -- caused the crash, according to the Marine Corps investigation.That explanation was translated into "pilot error" by the media, commentators and even, in so many words, by some Marines.It's a verdict that Connie Gruber and Trish Brow want to see changed -- for their husbands' legacies and for their children who, in the Internet age, will forever see their fathers' names linked to that crash. John Brow and Brooks Gruber, the widows say, were victims as much as any of the other Marines on the V-22 that night.They were doing their best to test and prove the value of the Osprey. It was an aircraft that their Marine Corps leaders desperately wanted and that they themselves believed had enormous military potential. But it was an aircraft and a program fraught with problems."That tragic accident was the direct result of the crewmen being tasked with an insurmountable, premature mission in a dangerously immature aircraft," Connie Gruber said.Now a fellow Marine V-22 pilot has come forward to defend his dead colleagues and make much the same argument. Lt. Col. James Schafer, who retired in 2006 after 25 years, was flying one of the four MV-22s (two flights of two planes) on the mission that ended so tragically.The Marines and the secretary of the Navy "should exonerate" the pilots, Schafer said. "Let's remove the dishonor."The accident was a result of too much pressure from the Marines and others who were trying to get the Osprey program into production, says Schafer, who was assigned to the V-22 test program from 1994 to 2000. "The program was pushed too hard," he said. "We pushed too hard. The best Marine Corps pilots we had became overwhelmed with the push."A decade later, the Osprey seems secure. The Marines have dozens of V-22s in service and many more ordered. Both widows say they're pleased that the bugs were eventually worked out of the Osprey."The Marine Corps got their airplane," says Trish Brow said. "Now my husband deserves to get his name cleared."'I've healed'Connie Gruber has a Ph.D. in education and works for the University of North Carolina Wilmington in a program that involves elementary school teachers. She is not bitter or angry, she says, but is on a mission."I'm a happy, healthy person. I've healed. I do this for Brooks. He's a man who can't speak for himself. I do it for his daughter."Brooke Gruber, 11, is named for her father. She was just six months old when he left their North Carolina home in early 2000 for two months of V-22 testing in Arizona.Ospreys based at nearby Marine Corps Air Station New River fly over Wilmington, N.C., regularly. Brooke has read about the accident, her mother says, and once asked, "Did Daddy do something wrong?"Trish Brow is a real estate agent in California, Md., near the Navy's Patuxent River test center where her husband was based. Their two sons, Mike and Matt, are 19 and 18. Matt just graduated from high school.Over the years, the two boys have heard and read about the accident. "The Marine Corps was happy to let it be misperceived as pilot error," said Trish Brow, and she wants that changed for her sons."Their dad was a wonderful human being who was following another airplane, doing his job, and terrible things happened," she said. "It's not right to leave these guys [the pilots] hanging out there."Within months of the crash, Connie Gruber began writing to the Marines, Pentagon officials and members of Congress saying the two pilots had unfairly been blamed. Trish Brow joined the effort. They found an advocate in Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., whose congressional district includes Wilmington, Brooks Gruber's hometown, and major Marine Corps bases.Jones has lobbied both Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Amos and Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus to clear the pilots by stating in their personnel records that "it was not pilot error" that caused the accident.'Human factors'Schafer, a staunchly loyal Marine who remains close to the families of his dead colleagues, has assisted Jones. "Somebody needs to defend 'Boot' [John Brow] and 'Chuckie's' [Brooks Gruber's] honor other than their widows," Schafer said.They were superb pilots, Schafer says, anything but the reckless cowboys that even some fellow Marine pilots have portrayed them as. But neither had had much flying time in an MV-22.John Brow, 39 , was a career C-130 airplane pilot with more than 3,700 total hours. He had learned to fly helicopters to get into the V-22 program and had only 97 hours at the controls of an Osprey, only a dozen flying the aircraft while wearing night vision goggles.Brooks Gruber, 34, had had more than 2,000 hours' flying time in Marine helicopters before transferring to the Osprey program. At the time of the crash he had had just 86 hours of flight time in a V-22 and only 16 hours flying with night vision goggles."Boot was the most conservative" of the test team, Schafer said. "He called it by the book. We used him as our sanity checker. Chuckie was gifted behind the controls." He had a feel for flying and didn't over- or undercontrol an aircraft.Schafer is an advocate for the Osprey, considers it a great airplane and believes its full potential has yet to be exploited. But he says there is plenty of blame to go around for the crash: The Marines, Pentagon, Bell Helicopter and Boeing all bear some responsibility.A Marine spokesman, Capt. Brian Block, said the finding of "human factors" as the cause of the accident should not be equated with pilot error or blaming the pilots."Whenever a mishap like this occurs, we owe it to our Marines to take an honest, dispassionate look at all possible contributing factors to ensure it does not happen again," Block said. "The investigations into this mishap revealed that human factors contributed to, but were by no means solely responsible for, this mishap."These findings in no way impugn nor denigrate Maj. Gruber and Lt. Col. Brow's reputations as Marine officers, Marine aviators, and MV-22 pioneers. Maj. Gruber and Lt. Col. Brow were selected as pilots for what, at the time, was a brand new airframe precisely because of their courage, skill, and impeccable records."Navy spokeswoman Lt. Cmdr. Tamara Lawrence said Mabus reviewed the crash investigation reports and "determined their conclusions still stand: that it was a result of a chain of events which, taken together, resulted in the loss of very talented and brave Marines."A spokesman for Fort Worth-based Bell said "it would be inappropriate to comment on an internal Marine Corps matter."What went wrongFlight and operational testing of new aircraft is an extremely detailed and scripted process. But as the simulated hostage rescue mission unfolded that night in Arizona, not everything went according to plan. A computer went sour in the lead plane. The pilots, perhaps distracted, failed to descend to lower levels nearing the Marana airport.As they approached the landing zone, the planes were too high and began a steep descent aiming for the runway, a piece of cake for an experienced military helicopter pilot. John Brow and Brooks Gruber, doing as they were trained, were following the lead plane but got out of position and tried to maneuver back into line.They had little forward airspeed, and the rotors began to stall, losing the lift that holds the aircraft in vertical flight.Just 200 feet above the ground, in a span of about three seconds, the aircraft rolled uncontrollably to the right and turned upside down before slamming into the ground.The pilots had gotten into an aerodynamic condition called vortex ring state or blade stall. The lead plane may have had the same problem, but it simply landed very hard, crushing the landing gear and skidding several hundred feet. Its flight crew and the Marines aboard all survived without critical injuries.From his position several miles away, Schafer said he knew the two aircraft were too high as they began to descend.For safety reasons, any pilot or co-pilot on that mission could have called a halt to the plan."I could have stopped that crash. I could have called a wave-off. I was the most experienced [pilot]. I had the most hours in the V-22 of the test team," Schafer said. "I've been in their position and been too high in a V-22, and that airplane isn't friendly when you're trying to descend fast."But Schafer says the reasons behind the crash go beyond pilot mistakes or misjudgments.In development since 1981, at a cost approaching $15 billion, the Osprey was a troubled program. It had been the target of critics inside and outside the Pentagon, including Defense Secretary Dick Cheney. By mid-1999, the Marines, with support of the Air Force and Navy, were gearing up for operational test and evaluation (op-eval), a detailed series of tests to show the aircraft could do what it was supposed to do. But the Osprey at that point wasn't much past the experimental stage. Much of the developmental testing aimed at understanding its quirks, including what would happen in high-speed descents, had been drastically shortened because of time and budget pressures.'Best of the best'Things didn't get any better once the op-eval began. Many days it was a challenge just getting one plane to fly, Schafer recalls, let alone the three or four that were needed. Carefully drawn, already tight plans for training pilots and crews were altered and further compressed. Tests were canceled, then skipped because aircraft were grounded for repair.There was pressure on the test team from the Marines, the Pentagon, Bell, Boeing and Congress. "It was an ugly time," Schafer said.In typical Marine fashion, the test team pushed on, trying to meet schedules and expectations. "We were convinced we were the best of the best," Schafer said. "If anyone could do it we could. We wanted this airplane in the fleet as bad as anyone."More tests were delayed or skipped. Pilot training, which was already circumscribed, was further compressed.The night of the crash, both Brooks Gruber and Maj. Anthony Bianca, commanding the mission from the lead airplane, were also working on their credentials to be weapons training instructors. It was one more set of demands on men who already had a cockpit full of challenges.That lack of training was a crucial element, Schafer said. The pilots had trained to fly the V-22 in helicopters, but the V-22 was no helicopter.Only time in the cockpit, pushing the aircraft and testing its limits, getting a seat-of-the-pants feel for the machine and its characteristics, can prepare a pilot for when things go awry.John Brow and Brooks Gruber didn't have enough time in the V-22, Schafer said. "Boot and Chuckie didn't know that aircraft would depart flight."After numerous investigations and other reviews of the V-22 program, the airplane was put through more rigorous developmental tests.Those included extensive testing aimed at learning about its susceptibility to vortex ring state and how to get out of it. A warning device was added to the cockpit to alert pilots when they approach the danger zone.As a result of the lessons learned from the terrible crash, the Marines say the Osprey is a better, safer aircraft."Their role in testing the MV-22 materially contributed to the development of one of the most capable airframes in the Marine Corps' inventory - one that has time and again proven its value in Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti, Libya and elsewhere," said Block, the Marine spokesman.Still Jones, who says he has been inspired by Connie Gruber's passion to cleanse the stain from her husband's reputation, vows he will continue to press for the official record to clear the pilots of blame. He cites a quote from Voltaire:"To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth."Bob Cox, 817-390-7723Have more to add? News tip? Tell us
