Word: bell
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...Marine investigation into the accident, obtained by TIME, points to an apparent culprit. According to a lengthy list of snafus detailed in the official probe, the Marines accuse Bell of allowing the helicopter to take off even though the Pentagon had ordered it grounded because of five urgent safety problems. Two of the five requested fixes were designed to prevent a loss of engine power, which investigators for the families believe caused the crash. The report concluded that the Cobra should never have taken off until these and other repairs had been made. Bell has shed little light...
Like a motorist picking up his car from the repair shop, the two Marine pilots expected their Bell AH-1 Cobra to be running smoothly when they went to retrieve it. After all, the two-man gunship had been in the Fort Worth, Texas, factory nearly a year for a $1.8 million overhaul. But Major Michael Browne and 1st Lieut. Robert Straw found enough problems with the chopper to delay their departure a day. Then, 20 minutes after they took off in the late afternoon of May 23, 1997, they were killed when their aircraft plunged into a field...
...despite Bell's actions, the Marines have done nothing--not even scolded the company. A Pentagon official, trying to explain the Marines' passive treatment of Bell, says the company exerts a strong "gravitational pull" on the service. Bell reaps 95% of the Marines' spending on helicopters each year, or more than $1 billion. More critically, some Pentagon officials suggest that the Marines don't want the crash to jeopardize Bell's $36 billion V-22 program. That Marine "tilt-rotor" aircraft, which takes off and lands like a helicopter and cruises like a turboprop airplane, is on the verge...
...Band. But the program has had powerful critics from the start. The Bush Administration tried to kill it, saying its $79 million-a-copy price tag was too steep. The Army has refused to buy the Osprey, citing its cost. Pentagon officials acknowledge that the Cobra's crash--and Bell's role in it--could complicate the Marines' efforts to keep buying V-22s because of doubts it might raise about Bell. "If the Marines come down hard on Bell, the whole program could be called into question," says Lawrence Korb, who oversaw Pentagon logistics and personnel during the Reagan...
...families of the dead aviators agree. "There's a coziness and collusion between the Marines and Bell because of the Marines' reliance on Bell," says William Straw, father of the 29-year-old Marine pilot killed in the Texas crash. The Straw family knows something about military aviation. William, a 1967 graduate of the Air Force Academy and a former test pilot, won the Distinguished Flying Cross for piloting a C-130 cargo plane through bad weather and enemy fire to resupply a beleaguered U.S. outpost in Vietnam. Both of Robert's grandfathers won that decoration in World...