Wood and Could

On 12 August 2022, a hard clutch engagement forced an AFSOC (U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command) CV-22 Osprey crew to make an emergency landing in a nature preserve on the Norwegian island of Senja.

Onsite repairs to the downed aircraft were deemed impossible, and Norwegian authorities—citing the delicacy of the Stongodden nature preserve’s bucolic terrain—balked at the notion of a conventional salvage operation.

Thus began a vexing, eminently 21st Century drama that saw the $90-million tiltrotor sit, idle and moldering, in deference to mosses, lichens, wandering reindeer, and environmental activists. For 46-days the Osprey sat in ignominy—waiting with the infinite, brooding patience of abandoned machines—as Norwegian military and environmental officials concocted a plan by which to remove it from the island, and U.S. Air Force brass pondered and finally approved the operation.

The CV-22’s dimensions and weight proved preclusive to airlift. What’s more, notions of disassembling the stranded aircraft were rendered moot by the Osprey’s complexity, the heft of its major components, and the critter’s off-putting tendency to topple-over when deprived of an engine. Ergo, Norway’s best and brightest proposed an alternate scheme; slide the 16-ton behemoth to the sea, and hoist it aboard a boat.

Lieutenant Colonel Eivind Byre of the Royal Norwegian Air Force stated: “Therefore, we plan to build a small road out of wood materials which makes as little harm to nature as possible. Weather and wind in Norway this time of the year can change quite quickly, and is an important factor to consider.”

In addition to a makeshift plywood thoroughfare, Norwegian crews were tasked with the building of a ramp and a jetty by which to move the Osprey along and facilitate its retrieval by sea.

Odd Helge Wang, a sergeant in Norway’s 139th Maritime Helicopter Wing called the plan incredibly complicated, and “something neither we nor the Americans have done before.”

Notwithstanding Sergeant Wang’s skepticism and its conspicuous absence of practicality, the plan worked. According to reports from the Norwegian Armed Forces, salvage crews set up a small camp on Senja’s coast, then got about the business of building the wooden ramp. The Osprey was drained of its fuel, then carefully positioned on subject ramp before workmen slowly hauled it seaward. On Tuesday, 27 September 2022, Norwegian military officials announced the CV-22 had been successfully lifted by crane, and loaded safely onto a transport ship.

The news elicited praise from AFSOC director of public affairs Lieutenant Colonel Rebecca L. Heyse, who put forth in a statement: “We’re grateful for the partnership with our Norwegian partners as we’ve worked to recover the CV-22 over the past six-weeks. The successful recovery is a great example of the strength of the partnerships in the European theater that allow us to face whatever challenges come our way.”

According to sources party to the effort, the most significant challenge with which salvage crews contended wasn’t the fiddly physics of moving a contraption as massive and ungainly as the CV-22 over a wooden sliding-board; rather, it was Northern Norway’s storm-prone weather—which not only battered the worksite incessantly, but repeatedly delayed the arrivals of barges bearing construction materials and equipment.

Presently, the newly-recovered Osprey is enroute to the nearest NATO port. What AFSOC intends to do with the aircraft thereafter remains unknown.

FMI: www.taskandpurpose.com