Posted on Thu, May. 15, 2008
Boeing helicopter work to resume amid foul-play concerns
By Maria Panaritis and Linda Loyd
Inquirer Staff Writers
Work remained halted at the Boeing Co. plant in Ridley Township yesterday as suspicions of foul play dominated an unfolding investigation into how two military helicopters were damaged as they were nearing completion for an Army contract.
A union official said idled assembly-line workers were "very concerned" about reports that someone might have intentionally "hacked out" wiring on one helicopter and that a washer critical to propeller operation on another had been found where it did not belong.
Rep. Joe Sestak, a former Navy admiral whose district includes the plant, said that he had spoken with Army investigators and that odds were low that the damage to the two Chinook F-model choppers was accidental.
The helicopters are part of a new fleet that has not yet been deployed in combat. Each helicopter costs from $20 million to $30 million.
Company officials and Defense Department investigators, including an agent of the criminal-investigations division, would not detail what they had learned. They also offered no explanation of why someone might seek to vandalize key military aircraft while the country was at war.
"Our members are very, very concerned and very, very upset," said John DeFrancisco, president of Local 1069 of the United Auto Workers, which represents 1,640 production and maintenance employees at Boeing. "They are prideful men and women that build those aircraft. Our fighting forces fly in those aircraft.
"Nobody can say whether this was on purpose. Whether wires were crimped or cut accidentally, we don't know yet," DeFrancisco said.
DeFrancisco said that the damage detected Tuesday by Boeing quality-assurance staff coincided with union-leadership elections that day, but that he saw no connection because the race was not contentious and there was "no animosity" toward management.
"I believe without a shadow of a doubt it had nothing to do with our elections down here," said DeFrancisco, who is being replaced next month by president-elect Tony Forte.
"The union does not condone or appreciate anything being alleged like this happening," DeFrancisco said. "This affects us all."
Boeing, based in Chicago, employs more than 5,100 people across the Philadelphia region, making it one of the biggest manufacturers here.
Work on the Chinook assembly line at the Rotorcraft Division came to a standstill Tuesday and remained off-line yesterday as investigators and government contracting officials inspected all eight aircraft on the line in various stages of production. The company said the other six helicopters appeared to be fine.
"There's a low probability that this was not deliberate," said Sestak, a member of the Armed Services Committee. "But it can't be ruled out that it was some accident or some nondeliberate occurrence."
Sestak said the damage and irregularities involving the two Chinook CH-47F helicopters was an "unusual occurrence without any question. But I've also learned . . . wait till the assessment is out."
He said it "may take a couple weeks now to make a final determination of how it occurred exactly."
Production on the Chinook assembly line, the only one in the nation, could resume as early as today, Sestak said.
Boeing is building 458 Chinook CH-47Fs and MH-47Gs as part of an Army contract through 2018. Company officials say they do not believe there is a systemwide problem with the Chinooks.
"The Defense Contract Management Agency and the program manager of the Army were there, and everyone has agreed they'll be ready to move forward tomorrow with full production," said Sestak, who said he was briefed after Army investigators met yesterday morning with Boeing officials in Ridley Township.
Agents with the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, an arm of the Office of Inspector General, were dispatched to the facility as part of the Army probe of the damage reported by Boeing, Defense Department spokesman Gary Comerford said.
DCIS notified the U.S. Attorney's Office as a matter of course, Comerford said. The company notified the FBI Tuesday, but the bureau was only monitoring the situation, an FBI spokeswoman said.
The U.S. Attorney's Office in Philadelphia would not say whether federal prosecutors had been asked to participate in the Defense Department investigation.
Boeing spokesman Joseph L. LaMarca Jr. said that government investigators were on site beginning Tuesday, and that the damage appeared limited to two helicopters.
"They did inspections overnight, and so far it looks like there are no irregularities with any of the other aircraft on the line," LaMarca said. Boeing produces about three Chinooks a month.
The problems were detected during routine inspections. At the behest of Boeing, agents with the Defense Contract Management Agency, which oversees Army contracts, swiftly made their way to the plant, LaMarca said.
Chinook production employees reported to work yesterday as scheduled, though assembly work remained stalled while the investigation continued, LaMarca said.
He said it was too soon to know whether the problems detected with the two Chinook F-models were caused by a mechanical issue on the assembly line or by sabotage.
"Some people threw that word around" Tuesday, LaMarca said, "but as the old saying goes, 'You don't know what you don't know.' "
The aircraft are part of a contract to upgrade the Army's fleet of Chinooks, which are ideal for high-altitude combat zones such as Afghanistan and Iraq because their propellers provide high lift.
Some are being built from scratch and others are being "remanufactured" using recycled D-model Chinook parts on a new fuselage.
DeFrancisco, the union president, said his plant manager had described the damage to him.
"There's a big grouping of wires that runs all around the aircraft," DeFrancisco said. "It looks like it wasn't cut clean, like if you would cut it with a saw. It looks like it was hacked at, from what I'm being told, four, five, six, seven times, with maybe a hand cutter or snippers, or something like that."
On the other helicopter, DeFrancisco said, a propeller washer was found in a combiner-box transmission area. He said the washer "is what keeps the propellers in unison when they rotate on top of the Chinook."
"We don't know how it got there - whether it fell in there, whether in shipment, in movement, we don't know," he said. "I'd rather not do a lot of speculating."
Posted on Fri, May. 16, 2008
Feds offer 5G reward for tips on Boeing saboteurs
By WILLIAM BENDER
Philadelphia Daily News
+
benderw@phillynews.com 215-854-5255
Criminal investigators from the Defense Department yesterday offered a $5,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of those responsible for damaging two Army helicopters at the Boeing Co. plant in Delaware County.
The production line for the CH-47F Chinook had been shut down since Tuesday, when the defects were discovered, but employees returned to work yesterday.
Army spokesman Dave Foster said yesterday that the damage to the twin-engine helicopters "has been determined to be an isolated incident" but that the investigation would continue.
Severed wires were found in one Chinook and a misplaced washer in another, according to U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak, a former Navy admiral whose district includes a portion of the sprawling rotorcraft plant in Ridley Township.
Federal officials yesterday were handing out fliers to workers, offering a $5,000 reward for information about the "vandalism" of the two nearly completed aircraft.
"We have determined that this was a deliberate act and not an accident," said Ken Maupin of the Defense Criminal Investigative Service. He said 10 DCIS agents have been assigned to the case.
"There are federal statutes that would implicate anybody who intentionally interfered with a mechanism like this that is being introduced into a theater of war," U.S. Attorney Pat Meehan said.
Anyone with information about the case is asked to call DCIS at 267-228-2782.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Note that the wires were described as "hacked" in the first story but "severed" in the second.
