People like to take the best of everything.
It’s great if it all goes well, but the reality is that things don’t always go so smoothly......
Hey everyone, Tomeko here, how do you do?
Today, I’d like to discuss an aircraft that aimed to have the best of everything.
This is a kit that had been released quite a while ago, but it will be re-released since a veeeery long time.
Unfortunately the numbers are limited, so if you are interested, I would recommend you reserve yours early.
An odd appearance that could be taken as an airplane or a helicopter.
Some of you may have seen it from titles with strong military presence such as Ghost in the Shell or the movie Transformer etc.
The V-22 Osprey.
The VTOL Transportation unit, possessed by U.S Marines and Air Force.
Right.
Before we get onto the details, allow me to touch on Helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft (*the normal airplane with wings).
These two both have their ups and downs.
♦Helicopter
Plus:
- Able to lift off directly, thus does not require long runway.
- Requires little space for storage, just needs enough space for the rotating wings.
- Able to hover (halt in mid-air)
- Able to fly relatively close to ground surface.
Minus:
- Short traveling distance – Unable to fly too far.
- Slower than a Fixed-wing Aircraft
♦Fixed-wing Aircraft
Plus:
- Able to travel a long distance
- Great for traveling fast
Minus:
- Requires a runway for taking off.
- Requires space for the size of its wings.
- Unable to hover, thus cannot stay at one place
So they both have their differences, and this V-22 Osprey was created, trying to take the best of both worlds. Osprey, sometimes known as a sea hawk, is a fish-eating bird of prey, a nickname very suitable for a military aircraft.
The Osprey is categorized in the tilt-rotor aircraft.
As the name has it, it rotor can be tilted.
There are fixed wing on both sides of the body, and rotors at the end of each wing on top of that. And, by changing the direction this rotor faces, it can either fly like a helicopter, or like an airplane.
Apparently, these wings are connected, so that even if one of the engines stops, it will take power from the other engine to have both wings always moving together.
During the WWII, I hear there may or may not have been twin-engine pilots that managed to return even with one of their engines broken, but it clearly seems that the modern aircrafts are a lot safer.
During early development stages, there were difficulties taking balance, when tilting the rotors, but at present, these are equipped in the amphibious assault ship USS Wasp, as well as despatched to Iraq etc. being active on the front lines.
There seems to be plans for the future, for them to be used for rescue works and special mission types etc. as well as aerial fueling types and early warning types, other than just the transport type.
......although the schedule is still unconfirmed.
By the way, looking at the completed model images of this kit, it seems that you can only reproduce the helicopter mode, but may be if you customized it, you might be able to tilt the rotor......(hopefully)
At present, there aren’t many companies that has kits of the Osprey, so I hope the companies other than Italeri will release some too.
(It seems that Italeri usually make kits with smaller number of parts)
So anyway, that will be it for today!
Thanks for reading, see you next time!
By Tomeko (Technology advances by overcoming failure)
Idle discussion: The history of V-22 to its practical use
This Osprey, it went through a long rough road to reach the level of practical use.
The world’s first tilt-rotor aircraft was made back in the 1980s.
But due to issues of funds, its first flight was delayed to 1989, and there were even talks of discontinuing its development at one stage.
The project itself had been preserved, however, the greatest setback of the development of this V-22 was its multiple crashes during its early production stages of the prototypes.
The number of prototypes made were 5.
Out of those, one crashed right after takeoff. The two pilots luckily managed to escape.
Another had its engine burst in flame. For this, 7 people on board have deceased.
The decrease in the number of prototypes at this stage also added to the delay of the project.
The accidents continued onto the initial production stage too.
In April 2000, it crashed while testing troop transport, which caused 19 to lose their lives.
In December of the same year, it crashed during the test of night flight, with 4 lives lost.
With the number of victims rising to 30, it was even given a cruel nickname like "Widow Maker". It was put to consideration for the replacement aircraft of the VH-3 which was getting old, to transport the Marines troops, but due to the number of accidents that occurred, it had been rejected in the early stages.
So...... there has been a rather sad production history, this Osprey.
It is true that there were many accidents, but I think the reason there were so many victims were due to the nature of the aircraft being a transport aircraft as well. (it is very unlikely that there would be an accident that cause over 10 deaths at once if this was a fighter......)
And as they were trying to produce a mechanism that has not been achieved before, failure is part of the process of success. Not saying crashing is alright though, of course.
Anyway, there were various causes of crashes, but they have overcome those already.
It seems that there are even developments of tilt-rotors by private organizations too, so it would be interesting to see more of these kind of craft to be brought into the world.