Ever wonder if an Osprey's a** was water tight, would it float?

Paul Anderson

Paul Anderson

Charter Member
Ever wonder if an Osprey's a** was water tight, would it float?

Retired now, too much time on my hands.
For Alphasim Osprey.
Replace [contact_points] section with section in txt file.
Should not affect land behavior.
 
To answer the original question no, it wouldn't float. Being top heavy it will flip over once it hits the water just like the H-60 does. :icon_lol: Certaintly an interesting concept though.. did you make it using an Amphibian flight file, or you just modified the contact points & turned crash detection off? Cool idea though. A faster Chinook basically.
 
Yeap, if an Osprey settles in the water, it will & tip over immediately and soon after start taking on water. Living a stones throw from New River, I've watched the V-22's fly almost daily and watched them extract 2nd Force Recon members out of the water around the Onslow Bay area. Seeing that plus CH-53E's, Ch-46E's and US Army Ch-47's dip their ramps in the water, the belly's of the A/C are just about touching the water if not touching. Lots of skill hanging and balancing that close to disaster. Seen the old HH-3's and Sea King's sitting on water a few times a long time ago. Amazing!
 
To be fair most helicopters are top heavy, it comes with having the engine and gearbox at the top. Hell the Sea King will capsize if you push it, actually so will most ships but I don’t want to bore you with talk of metacentric height.
CH-47s can land in the water, there’s video footage around of special forces driving ribs into them and a metric ass tonne of water coming out the back after they take off. The main problem is shutting down, the vibration from the rotors as they slow down can provide enough CG shift to topple them over.
I’m not saying the Osprey would float on water if it was water tight but without a lot more weight and balance data it’s a bit hard to say. Hell I’ve seen pictures of a Lynx floating the right way up on the water, that never happens...
 
Heck, I can't even get my fishing bobber to float right side up...there's no way I could get a helo or Osprey to float right side up on water.

Would make for a great water extraction aircraft....but then again, all it really needs to do is dip the ramp in the water to yank some Seals or Marines out of the drink after a successful mission.

OBIO
 
Years ago, I worked at Port Operations in Pensacola. One of the things we did was provide boat services for the Navy Aircrew Sea Survival school there. One of the things they did was have us haul their students out in the middle of the bay, toss 'em out of the boat and a helo would come along and hoist 'em up and then lower 'em back into the water where we'd pick them up again. Once the whole class had been dunked and dipped, we'd head back to the pier with them.

Navy Helos would wait on us to get out into the bay and start dropping students into the water before coming in to start picking them up and putting them back down. The Coast Guard helos would operate with us now and then, but they were usually out in the ops area floating around waiting on us.

We also did parasailing so the students would know what it was like to hit the water in a parachute. Fun in the summer, but they sure hated it in the winter.
 
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