V-22 Osprey Ship Four crash and rigged court of inquiry

Parallel case to Kaydon, invoked at the lecture's close to generalize the "rigged board of inquiry" pattern. The court was instructed to find a fixable cause to protect the $40 billion program from Congressional cancellation. Tom served as expert witness in the subsequent civil suit by widows; his hydraulic-leak-in-the-upper-nacelle theory (one miracle) displaced the Navy's nacelle-fire theory (six miracles); the JAG investigation eventually adopted Tom's theory.

I could tell you half a dozen stories in different industries. One, big forgings for ships, where a company got screwed by another company. I did have the opportunity, about 20 years later, to screw that company that screwed the other company, just by chance. I could tell you on the V-22 Osprey how that court of inquiry was rigged. They were told they had to find something that could be easily fixed — this may be on one of the other videotapes, so I apologize. The Marine lieutenant colonel, or maybe a Navy captain — the guy who headed up the board of inquiry for the V-22 Osprey Ship Four crash — told someone in a bar one night that they were told they had to find something that could be easily fixed so Congress wouldn't scrap the 40-billion-dollar program. So that one was rigged.

Tom worked on the case. Used to illustrate the military/civilian liability split: Boeing and Bell settled with military families immediately; civilian families had to file suit and go to trial.

That's not to say you can't get something. I worked on the V-22 Osprey that crashed at Quantico, Virginia. Ship four. There were four military on there and a bunch of civilians. If I remember, Boeing and Bell settled with the military people right away. But the civilians all filed suit anyway. It's a mess, but it finally went to trial, and we can talk about that some other time. It doesn't have to do with corrosion. Just make sure you understand that as military officers, your lives are worthless, okay, at least from a business point of view. But you can eject, and if you survive the ejection you're fine.

Tom's expert witness work. Crash at Patuxent River killed crew. Navy's 4,400 findings of fact blamed engine fire from below; Tom testified the fire started in the upper hydraulics; JAG Corps reversed the Navy's finding to match Tom's analysis.

Another material from aerospace — the first large-scale production of carbon fiber aircraft was the V-22 Osprey, a tiltrotor helicopter. Bell had invented tiltrotors back in the 1960s and built a couple of prototypes for NASA. The advantage of a tiltrotor is — anybody know? It's a hybrid of fixed wing and helicopter. The nacelle is large enough for a person walking. I walked into the nacelle of ship four. I could stand up. Carbon fiber. Has to be lightweight, because these are big powerful engines. When you're in helicopter mode you need a big powerful engine. When you're in regular airplane flight mode, you don't have to have such a powerful engine. But when you're going to go into helicopter mode, you need a lot of power. And the engines were tied together with carbon fiber composite torque tubes.