A Crash and a Collusion?

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 15 miles southeast of Dallas.

Four days later--the day after Memorial Day--their North Carolina unit's Marines gathered in their chapel at New River air station. "Semper Fidelis," they intoned solemnly before 700 mourners. "We will never forget you." But despite the service's long and treasured tradition of mutual trust and fierce loyalty, forgetting their men is precisely what the Marines seem to have done in this case.

Browne and Straw, with 2,500 hrs. of flawless flying between them, spent the final seconds of their life steering their Cobra away from a school as its twin engines sputtered, slowing its rotor blades nearly to a halt. Upon impact, the aircraft exploded into a 1,500[degree]F fireball, fed by 300 gal. of jet fuel. The conflagration destroyed the helicopter, making it impossible to determine the cause of the crash.

But the 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 on the tragedy. After conferring with Bell lawyers, eight of the nine employees questioned about their work on the helicopter changed their statements to shift responsibility away from their company. (Bell, citing a suit filed by the pilots' families, declined to comment on the case.)

Yet 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 of lifting off after more than a decade of troubled development.