Semper Fi
Two Marines Die In Helicopter Crash
Investigation Finds Problems
But Marine Corps Takes No Action
Mindy Straw's husband never returned home from his mission that Memorial Day.
(CBS) On May 23, 1997, Major Michael Browne and Lieutenant Robert Straw went to
Fort Worth to pick up a Bell AH-1 Cobra that was getting almost $2 million in repairs at
the Bell factory. It was supposed to be a routine, noncombat mission.
Twenty minutes after taking off, they crashed. Both men died. What happened? Scott
Pelley reports.
Nobody wants to talk about the crash that killed the two men - neither the Marine Corps
nor the helicopter manufacturer, Bell Helicopter Textron. The Pentagon says that the cause
of the crash is a mystery. But the deaths of Browne and Straw have exposed a pattern of
negligence and lies.
On Michael Browne's arm was a tattoo: "Semper fidelis," the Marine Corps
motto meaning "always faithful." Browne graduated from flight school with
honors. In return, the Marines offered Browne the choice of piloting any aircraft he
wanted.
He chose to fly helicopters. "I think he said it's like being a bird, because you
can fly it as a bird flies," his father, Jim Browne, remembers. "You can
make it do whatever you want to do."
After 10 years as a pilot, including tours in Iraq and Somalia, Browne had a perfect
flying record. He became an instructor.
One of his students was First Lieutenant Robert Straw. Though Straw was new, his family
had a tradition of air combat. Both his grandfathers won the Distinguished Flying Cross
for heroism in World War II. His father won the Distinguished Flying Cross in Vietnam.
In May 1997, Browne and Straw were ordered to go to the Bell plant to pick up a Cobra that
just had been fitted with new equipment. Straw told his wife, Mindy, who was pregnant at
the time, that the mission was nothing special and that he would be home by Memorial Day.
The Cobra is the Marine's frontline attack helicopter. Powered by twin jet engines, it
carries a crew of two and is built in Fort Worth by Bell Helicopter Textron.
Within minutes of leaving the factory, Browne and Straw were in trouble. On the outskirts
of Dallas both of the Cobra's engines failed. Browne apparently used the last bit of
energy left in the helicopter to maneuver away from a school. The Cobra slammed into a
clearing and exploded; both men died.
The day of the funerals, both widows received a strange message from their husband's
commanding general.
"We just walked into the room, and he asked how the girls and I were doing,"
recalls Lynn Browne, Michael's widow. "And then he said, 'I advise you to get a
lawyer.' And he basically left the room."
She took this to mean "that foul play was involved. That that helicopter was
obviously not fit to fly."
"If Mike could have possibly put it down, he would have," says Jim
Browne. "But something terrible went wrong with that aircraft. He didn't put it
down, couldn't put it down."
The Marines launched an exhaustive investigation that ultimately became an indictment of
Bell. The investigators found the Cobra was due for five critical repairs; Bell had not
completed any when it delivered the helicopter. Investigators also discovered the Cobra
had been cannibalized for parts. Maintenance records were such a mess that it was
impossible to tell what parts had been replaced or how.
The investigators concluded that Bell knew there were safety problems.
The Marines' report determined the Cobra "should have been grounded" and
that "Major Browne had to trust the system to ensure the aircraft was, in fact,
safe."
The events just before the crash will never be known: Fire consumed most of the evidence.
But the wreckage did show that both engines lost power.
"There's only two things that can cause (the engines to lose power),"
says John Howie, a lawyer representing the families in a suit against Bell. "One
is for the pilots to intentionally roll both engines off, or for the engines to
malfunction. And there was a clear history of engines malfunctioning, and these were very
experienced pilots."
The Cobra has been haunted by a mysterious engine problem called "rollback"
- a sudden loss of power. The cause is not clear.
Howie says that there have been approximately 100 incidents of this problem. "There
were 74 at the time of this accident," he says. "The report suggests
there have been a number since then."
Two of the five repairs Bell failed to complete were designed to fix the rollback problem.
Still the Marine Corps concluded that it couldn't blame Bell because "there is not
enough data to determine the exact cause of the mishap."
The families of the two dead pilots are outraged. "I was just amazed that these
people allowed this aircraft to even leave this facility; it just made me cry,"
says Mindy Straw. "I couldn't believe there was such negligence involved."
The investigation uncovered evidence of negligence that went far beyond the one downed
Cobra. The report included an interview with Doyle Eldridge, a Marine sergeant who had
been overseeing Bell's work at its plant for four years. Eldridge told investigators that
he found "numerous instances of errors, and everyone turns a blind eye to
it."
Eldridge complained that critical systems were often assembled incorrectly. He remembered
finding a helicopter ready for takeoff with its steering mechanism disconnected. "If
the aircraft had managed to get into the air, it would have crashed," he said.
Perhaps worst of all for the families, the investigators found that Bell had not been
honest about testing the Cobra. After any major modification, Bell is required to perform
a rigorous test flight. Bell's test pilot, Monty Nelson, told investigators that he made
the flight himself and performed a "full card test."
But when Howie put Nelson under oath in the lawsuit, the test pilot's story changed. "He
said that he didn't do (the test)," says Howie. "And he didn't know
anyone who had."
"This is manslaughter," says Lt. Straw's father Bill, who is himself a
decorated combat pilot and an engineer. "I don't believe they intended for anyone to
be killed. But I also don't believe for a minute that they thought that that aircraft was
suitable for flying or that it was ready to go."
When the Cobra was pronounced "ready to go" on Memorial Day weekend,
Major Browne had questions.
The U.S. Army keeps an office at Bell to oversee quality control. Major Browne was
suspicious of the Cobra he'd been given. He powered up the engines, but they didn't seem
quite right. He told the Army representative, Major Terry Reeves, that he wanted to test
fly the Cobra right there at the plant. Reeves denied permission. He assured Browne the
helicopter had already passed all its flight tests.
At that time Reeves explained that another test would be against regulations.
The Marine investigation found there was no such regulation. The Army simply didn't want
to pay for the extra fuel. Flying another test would have cost about $200.
"This one just fell through the cracks," a supervisor in the Army quality
control office told investigators after the crash. "I was really busy."
The year of the crash the Pentagon gave that office an award for ensuring "product
quality and customer satisfaction."
"Somebody should be responsible," says Mindy Straw. "Held
accountable for my husband's life and Michael Browne's life."
There has been no action of any kind taken against Bell. The Marines has kept everyone
involved in the investigation under wraps. A Marine representative warned CBS News
that if questions were pressed, then the Corps might be forced to raise pilot error as a
cause of the crash - even though there is no suggestion Browne and Straw contributed to
the accident in any way.
"The Marine hierarchy has said, 'We don't want to investigate this anymore,'"
father Bill Straw says. "The Navy has said, 'We don't want to investigate it
anymore, and if you keep bringing it up, we have the means, and we'll go after some way to
discredit the pilots involved.'"
The families believe the Marines is motivated by its dependence on Bell, virtually the
Corps' only supplier of helicopters. Bell is building the Marines' next-generation
aircraft, on which the Corps has staked its future. The Marines want to spend $28 billion
on the V-22 program. At the time of the Cobra crash, Congress was debating how many V-22s
to buy.
"Nobody's being charged here," says Bill Straw. "The only thing
that's happened is our sons are dead, the military lost an aircraft, and life goes on as
if nothing happened."
Bell declined repeated requests for an interview. In its reply to the families' suit, Bell
denies any responsibility for the crash. But the company is offering the families $1
million to drop the suit.
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