Tragedy struck almost a year ago, on 29 November 2023, when a US Special Operations Command Bell-Boeing CV-22B crashed in the waters off Yakushima Island, Japan, killing all eight service members aboard the Osprey. It was the fourth deadly V-22 crash in less than two years.
A week later, on 6 December, the US Air Force (USAF), US Navy (USN) and US Marine Corps announced the grounding of the Pentagon’s full fleet of the tiltrotor aircraft, including its newest variant, the CMV-22B.
Intended as a replacement for the Grumman C-2A Greyhound in the carrier onboard delivery (COD) role, CMV-22Bs had been steadily replacing the aged type since their first deployment in August 2021.
Some 7,000nm (13,000km) away from Japan at Naval Air Station (NAS) Norfolk, Virginia, VRC-40’s commanding officer, Commander Andrew Dumm, and executive officer Commander Brett Cameron were suddenly struck by the realisation that the “Rawhides” – the USN’s only remaining C-2 squadron – would immediately have to take over the COD mission in its entirety, supporting aircraft carriers deployed worldwide.
“The first thought on my mind was safety,” Dumm recalls. “We’re going to be called upon to do more, a lot more and this can’t be one of those scenarios where we do more with less.”
Dumm says he wanted to discourage any notion that the Rawhides, flying the navy’s 15 remaining C-2s, could support deployed carriers with single-aircraft detachments (or “Dets”, as they are known) and fewer people than the two-aircraft, 48-person Dets that C-2 squadrons had long employed to carry people, mail and equipment.
SAFETY FOCUS
“Sure, the mission is delivering high priority cargo, but the most important thing is the people we put in the back of these airplanes who didn’t sign up for the risks of naval aviation,” Cameron stresses. “Keeping them safe is a sacred duty to us.”
“This is the safe model that has worked for nearly 60 years,” Dumm adds. “Departing from that – I was uncomfortable trading what was currently deemed to be an unsafe situation on the V-22 side for establishing another unsafe situation on the C-2 side.”
For almost six decades, detachments from C-2 squadrons home-based on America’s east and west coast have deployed to support carriers worldwide, operating from overseas navy and Marine Corps air stations, USAF bases and other locations. It is an unheralded but essential mission.
As many as six squadrons flew the C-2 in the 1980s. In 2015 the navy announced that the Greyhound would be replaced by the CMV-22B. So began the years-long process of readying the Osprey to assume the COD mission and retiring the C-2.
By December 2023, the last west coast C-2 squadron, VRC-30, had decommissioned. NAS North Island, California-based VRM-30 – the first operational CMV-22B squadron – had taken its place and already completed three deployments in support of carriers. The Osprey squadron’s Norfolk, Virginia-based counterpart, VRM-40, has yet to deploy a detachment in support of a carrier.
With Christmas on the horizon, the Rawhides’ focus was on supporting the USS Dwight D Eisenhower’s 2023/2024 deployment, the USS Harry S Truman’s 2024 deployment and working with the USS Gerald R Ford off the Virginia coast. The squadron was also preparing to “sundown” (retire) the C-2 and for the end of VRC-40 itself prior to the navy’s September 2026 retirement of the Greyhound: a date that it is holding firm on.
“We had been on a much different trajectory, planning for the C-2’s sundown,” Dumm says.
On the day the V-22 fleet was grounded, “we had actually had a phone conversation with the Chief of Naval Air Forces personnel staff about defunding another Det’s-worth of billets to continue the sundown process,” Cameron remembers. “We got off that phone call and then later that afternoon we saw the grounding bulletin.”
Immediately, the Rawhides had to shift emphasis from winding operations down to stepping on the gas harder than any C-2 squadron ever.
“We had 15 aircraft, which was definitely a plus-up,” Dumm notes. “Traditionally VRC-40 has 12 aircraft on hand to meet maintenance requirements and CQ [carrier training] requirements in addition to deployed requirements.”
MULTIPLE DEPLOYMENTS
Dumm says the squadron had a little over 300 people when the Osprey grounding was announced. The Rawhides’ Det-4 was already deployed to Bahrain in support of the Eisenhower and the squadron took over Det-5 in Japan, supporting the USS Ronald Reagan, from VRC-30 in October 2023. So roughly 100 personnel and four C-2s were already on deployment.
With the CMV-22Bs of VRM-30 that had been supporting the USS Carl Vinson in the western Pacific standing down on 6 December, Dumm and Cameron recognised that VRC-40 would need to step up to support the vessel within days. It also would have to build up a detachment to support the USS Theodore Roosevelt, which deployed on 11 January.
To safely get detachments up and running for the Vinson and Roosevelt, VRC-40 needed experienced C-2 personnel – fast.
The navy’s Airborne Command & Control and Logistics Wing, under which the Rawhides operate, as well as its Commander, Naval Air Forces and Commander, Naval Air Forces Atlantic, scrambled to help the Rawhides in finding the people they needed.
“We scoured the navy for everyone that had previous C-2 maintenance qualifications, previous aircrew qualifications, previous pilot qualifications – including many that had recently departed VRC-30 – to bolster our numbers,” Dumm says.
The squadron also clawed back pilots and maintainers who had gone on to different commands operating different aircraft including the CMV-22 and brought them back to VRC-40.
Dumm says that between December 2023 and July 2024, the Rawhides absorbed about 77 temporary duty personnel in addition to other pilots and aircrew that were brought to the unit permanently, bringing the squadron to a peak of “around 430 sailors flying and maintaining aircraft this summer”.
To support the Vinson, VRC-40 called on its forward-deployed Det-5 in Japan.
“They cancelled Christmas,” Dumm says. “They cancelled their leave after being deployed twice in 2023 with just days of notice to recollect the detachment and get back onboard the Vinson to support them.”
“Shortly thereafter the Roosevelt deployed,” Dumm adds. “And again with about three weeks’ of notice we got that detachment assembled and deployed from the west coast.”
In addition, the Rawhides were moving detachments all over the world to complete pre-deployment works-ups, support large-scale composite unit training exercises and assist with other events, Dumm notes.
He praises the many sailors that deployed back-to-back. “In the case of the Roosevelt we actually took what was notionally going to be our Truman detachment for later this year and we basically moved them forward six months. Generally, our work-up cycle is about six months.”
Dumm says the sailors VRC-40 recalled with recent C-2 experience and the pilots the squadron was able to recapture from the fleet made the Rawhides’ sudden surge possible.
“Many of the ex-VRC-30 pilots had west coast experience,” he explains. “We really tapped into that. We wouldn’t have been in a position to train very junior personnel from the ground up and deploy with days or three weeks of notice like we did for Vinson and Roosevelt.”
On 8 March 2024, the three-month grounding of the V-22 fleet was lifted – but not without caveats.
Flight envelope restrictions to help prevent Osprey crews from encountering problems – including the hard clutch engagements and metal chipping in the tiltrotor’s complex prop-rotor gearbox that led to the four fatal crashes between March 2022 and November 2023, killing 20 people – were put in place.
They include limiting V-22 flights to missions that stay within 30min of a suitable divert airfield. That restriction, still in place at the time of writing, effectively prevents CMV-22Bs from supporting deployed aircraft carriers as the ships are most often more than 30min away from shore.
VRC-40 pilot Lieutenant Harrison Lund and Petty Officer 2nd Class Chloe Oakley, who deployed with the Rawhides’ Det-4 to Bahrain between October 2023 and July 2024, offer examples of just how hard the squadron’s detachments have been working and why the Osprey’s current flight restrictions prohibit deployments.
Lund, the last pilot ever to complete training to fly the C-2, described flying 8h missions – almost four times as long as a typical COD flight – from Bahrain all the way to the northern Red Sea to support the Eisenhower as it battled drone and cruise missile attacks from Houthi rebels.
“I don’t know the official number of flight hours, but I think we set some records out there,” says Lund, who adds: “I flew almost 600h on deployment.”
Dumm says that flying 600h on one detachment is exceptional, as it is nearly the total flight time a pilot would usually leave VRC-40 with after two deployments.
HOT WORK
Oakley recalls being “hotter than she’s ever been” flying in the triple digit heat of the Middle East in the Rawhides’ aged Greyhounds.
“Pressurisation was an issue,” she says. “Air conditioning was non-existent and there were leaks – all sorts of leaks. If you’ve flown on a COD recently you’ve seen the aircrewmen stuffing trash bags in all of the holes that they can see. It’s simply to maintain the pressurisation.”
As of late-September, the USN had not announced a date for the resumption of regular CMV-22B detachments.
The US Naval Air Systems Command’s V-22 Joint Program Office tells FlightGlobal that an improved prop-rotor gearbox “is moving to the production and installation phase”. It reveals that work to retrofit Ospreys with two new gearboxes will require “1,000 maintenance man-hours and about an average of 10 days to complete”.
As June 2024 ended the Rawhides were supporting five detachments simultaneously: an unprecedented feat. Over 200 squadron personnel were deployed.
“We did not have a mishap,” Dumm says. “The fact that we were able to safely conduct three unplanned deployments and have five simultaneous deployments – which had never happened in the history of VRC-40 – all the credit goes to our sailors, who had their lives uprooted, had to go right back on deployment and say goodbye to their families again. They understood the mission and why we were doing it.”
When the CMV-22B finally does fully resume the COD mission it will have a staggering safety record to match. Since 1973 there has been just one fatal C-2 crash, in which three crew members perished. Since the Osprey became operational in 2007, there have been 13 V-22 crashes and 32 fatalities.
The Rawhides, now under the leadership of Cameron, remain the navy’s only fully operational airborne logistics support unit for deployed carriers and the last Greyhound squadron.
“I flew a C-2 to the boneyard about this time last year,” Dumm reflects. “It was a very sad, poignant time. They give you a big sharpie and let you sign the side of the plane. I’m like, ‘I can’t believe we’re letting this plane go’. To be able to take it to a new height in the years leading up to sundown is certainly a highlight of my career.”
