A U.S Air Force CV-22B Osprey has rendered a British hospital’s helipad inoperable.

Air ambulances are currently unable to land at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, the major trauma centre for the East of England.

The moment was captured by Trailspotter and a link to the video on their YouTube channel is provided.

We do not own this footage and we are not hosting this footage, any requests regarding hosting must be made to the channel we’ve embedded a link to below.

Watch the video on YouTube from Trailspotter here.

Dr Victor Inyang, Medical Director of East Anglian Air Ambulance:

“Due to an incident at the Cambridge University Hospitals helipad involving a military aircraft on Wednesday 21 April the helipad is temporarily unavailable to air ambulances. The next closest helipad is at Cambridge City Airport, where one of the East Anglian Air Ambulance teams is based. It will be possible for the EAAA helipad to be used as an alternative landing site during this time and have patients transferred to Addenbrooke’s from there by land ambulance. Addenbrooke’s is the major trauma centre for the region, therefore quick and efficient transfer of critically ill or injured patients to the hospital is vital. Using the EAAA helipad is the best alternative while the CUH helipad is reinstated.”

Maj Keavy Rake, from the USAF 48th Fighter Wing, said:

“The area was surveyed according to our policies and procedures and some damage did occur. We are taking steps to rectify as soon as possible. Our units are continuously coordinating with our local partners to improve operations. We are greatly appreciative of the relationship and coordination we have with the U.K.”

George Allison
George Allison
George has a degree in Cyber Security from Glasgow Caledonian University and has a keen interest in naval and cyber security matters and has appeared on national radio and television to discuss current events. George is on Twitter at @geoallison
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95 COMMENTS

  2. Helipad was obviously a heath Robinson affair, crock of crap and not fit for purpose. Maybe a ,local traveller contract mmmmmmm

  3. If the helipad can fall apart in that manner it was clearly not fit for purpose in the first place. A more substantial and permanent landing pad constructed of something which includes concrete might be advisable!!

    • I feel you don’t appreciate the sheer power that an osprey puts out. These helipads will be rated to accept all air ambulances including coastguard and probably RAF chinooks but not Ospreys. Their engines are incredibly powerful.

    • It is surprising that it was not constructed with concrete
      as most seem to be ,if they not at the top of an hospitial building.

      • Tbh I think the failing here was the Hospital not making it clear that their HLS was not suited to heavy tiltrotor aircraft.
        If it’s fine for light air ambulances then that’s okay, but the Hospital is the one who knows their HLS aren’t they?

  4. The MoD will accept responsibility for the damage, because US forces operating in the UK are here by invite of UK Government.

  5. We had a lovely heli pad, full concrete affair with easy access run to the ED and resus. Worked great, nice easy safe transfers. Trouble was one day someone’s plastic garden chair was blown over by one of the air ambulance. They took it all the way and got the helipad shut down. It ended up as a car park, the air ambulances then had to land in a local park, which needed clearing of families and then we had to trolley the poor casualties about 100 yard across a grass field ( not great for traumas) and then run through the whole hospital, added about 5 mins, being trolled around.

    all because the neighbours had cheap plastic chairs that fell over.

  8. Classic OOooops incident.

    Serious note the down draft from this thing is immense. Now I know some want this as a tanker / transport on the QE carriers, just imagine that down draft gets under the wing of a F35 on the flight line and tips it over the side – potentially a $100 million accident!

  9. Addenbrookes is an important hub hospital so I hope gets it fixed soon.

    Northumbria wanted to follow the Addenbrookes model and build a regional hub for emergency care.
    They found some land in Cramlington (a few miles north of Newcastle) next to the A19 duel carriageway. Great road links.

    So the Northumbria Specialist Emergency Care Hospital was built.
    Only snag – it’s built directly under the flight path for Newcastle airport. About 8km distance.
    Air ambulances need to stand off until there is a gap in the airline traffic.
    D’OH!

      • To be fair though George, I was referring to the comments on your lovely site. not the site itself. As an outsider looking in, it must look a bit nasty at times, just my thoughts though, feel free to delete me if you so desire.

        • I owe you an apology, my response was quite childish. Not the best of days today and I’m a bit defensive seemingly. I’m sorry for my response and I genuinely wouldn’t want to lose a reader over the above. If you’ve any criticism of what we’re doing then I hope you feel free to voice it so we can take it onboard.

          Sorry again.

          • Absolutely no apology required George, as said above I enjoy this site and check in quite often to catch up on the latest events. Not Military personally but have a healthy interest.

            To be critical of this site of yours, I would say that there are many times when certain people here use the anonymity mask afforded to them, to harangue and abuse other valuable contributors, seemingly just because their views differ.

            Banter is one thing but abuse is another thing altogether. Your FB site and indeed FB rules forbid the latter, it is only my opinion but it would be better if user anonymity was no longer a feature, not sure if that is something you would consider as active or helpful criticism.

            Best regards to you and you team.

          • George

            Generally you are doing a great job.

            It **might** be healthy if some of the OT ranty abusive stuff was moderated a little.

            It does degrade threads where some knowledgable people are making valid points and then in the middle of it strange personal abusive conversations pop up: that will disincentivise others, who do not know the characters, from reading on.

            I don’t agree with heavy moderation of sites as it can get to be too much.

            But there are a handful of people who could do with a gentle prod that abusive content is not acceptable.

            Cheers!

          • Yup and it would certainly encourage others to join in rather than get put off by the constant Trolling and abuse from those few individuals.

          • Just another thought, what about a Flag for moderation or report abuse option ? Handy when Racist remarks are posted that really don’t belong here.

          • Yes defo. There have recently been a number of comments that are clearly from the behind the anonymity of the brave keyboard types. Some discussions have been completely ruined by bickering and deliberate provocative comments.
            There is some great stuff on here and to be fair, most comes from knowledgeable posters who enrich thee experience, then suddenly it breaks down into deliberate negativity and destructive comments.
            Keep up the good work George.

          • Wow, I must say I was really pleased to see your prompt response George, never really expected that. The Flag Facility you have now provided should be welcomed by all on here and seen as a deterrent to those few who choose to carry on with the abuse of fellow site members.
            However I do worry that the new Voting feature will be a back door to said abuse as it is on so many other internet sites. The best way to stop these abusive people from carrying on in such a manner is to introduce the fair and open system in which members true Identities are strictly required, something you and your team could easily set up and monitor just like other sites including FB and Twitter.
            This afternoon I have had a little catch up of recent articles and comments and it does appear that certain individuals are indeed continuing their abuse of others despite your previous warning. If you would like me to highlight these over and above the new Flag system, I would be only too happy to assist.
            Thanks again.

          • We’ve binned the voting, it was being abused as you predicted. I’d certainly welcome an e-mail to [email protected] with details on the abuse so I can take action.

            Thank you for the help here.

  12. It seems the downwash is fairly substantial. Plenty of videos showing troops sliding down ropes and they struggle to stand up once on the ground. Seems old school heli are better for that kind of insertion.
    My 2 cents

  13. Evening all
    Whilst the Osprey is a fantastic aircraft this incident does show some of the limitations of such a large aircraft and where it can be utilised.

    Accidents happen, it will be fixed. We will all “move on”.

  14. What’s so special about the grass in Cambridge that helicopters can’t land on it until they build a real helipad to replace the piece of junk that got destroyed?

    • With you on this. I don’t understand, especially when school fields etc are designated landing spots for them all over the country before they get taxied to the casualty. Has to be able to land on grass and get a casualty out too?

    • The grass in Cambridge is famous because a group of British thinkers had a picnic on it over 400 years ago and came to the conclusion that a continent across the Atlantic was in dire need of British ingenuity and influence, so we should colonise it and it would ultimately turn into a super power and work for us for eternity.

      The grass in Cambridge should be protected at all costs for that.

    • It may be an access issue pk, you have to remember that even when the grass is and soil is fully dried pushing a hospital trolley is very hard work ( they are heave beasts with O2 cylinder, patient, maybe defibrillator if needed). If it’s wet you are not ever pushing that trolley through any level of soft ground.

      As for carrying it’s not practical, the trauma patient will have in a couple of lines, oxygen ect, they may be being bagged or resuscitated. If a carried patient arrests they are probably done for as you can’t do CPR while carry across a field.

      finally from a patient safety point any trauma call is considered to have spinal injuries until proven otherwise, bouncing them across field is just a bad idea. Any

      finally from a staffpoint of view, you will have a high risk of staff injuries running a casualty across rough ground.

      We tried to do rough ground transfers into our ED when we had to shut our pad, it just did not really work and was to unsafe.

      on balance you just have to consider the safety of patient and staff and if it’s safer to do that transfer at an air station the. Ambulance the patient the final bit then so be it.

      to be honest a lot of air ambulance transfers are about extracting the patient from a situation that’s difficult to get an ambulance to, so you don’t have to carry the person half a mile to the nearest road etc.

      • If it’s a true emergency than time is critical. The faster a patient is under the care of the trauma team than the better the chances of survival and recovery. I would presume that alternative landing sites are a distance away. How long does it take to replace the helipad? Of course, it appears that the helipad blown away was probably built under contract to someone’s brother-in-law.

        • Yes but no, time is critical, but doing it right can be more so ( depends ) The point is to keep safe And stable as possible until you get your casualty to definitive care. Fuck their spinal cord or lose an airway in the middle of a field is doing know-one any good. Purposeful speed over panicked rush if you can is alway the way to go. If your casualty has an open airway, is breathing and you have stabilised circulation, then your golden ( see what I did there) for safe transfer.

          You do it fast but aways do it right. As Stated I’ve done a fair number of over rough ground transfers and it’s shitty scary stuff, the patient goes off in the middle of a field, your fucked, Jamming a trolleys wheels into a mud with a trauma call on it is, your heading to fucked ( they are heavy and have wheels designed for smooth surfaces). Always always reduce your variables and chaos, make sure your keeping it all safe as possible ( it’s always on the edge with trauma and resus anyway) and the middle of a field is no place to work if you can ever avoid it.

    • FOD. Hides in grass. So pad is cleanable. Was a standard temporary strip funded and paid for by the charity. Nob jockey Officer didn’t inspect it was rated for his fat arse osprey.

  16. Nate you are talking absolute shite! Stop showing your immaturity and absolute lack of real time knowledge. Spend your time educating yourself on the subject matter your spouting about.

    • Good point, I spent a lot of time building Harrier hides across Germany which involved anchoring down the landing mats with pickets, that said from the video it appears that wasn’t the case here. But from what I have read the stuff blown away wasn’t for landing on but rather a walk way for hospital trollies

  18. It’s downdraft from the rotors. Do you understand the physics of how rotary and fixed wing aviation work? That ‘helipad’ was clearly a temporary structure and not really fit for purpose.

  19. A very good example of why concrete should be used in future and most probably the first time an Osprey has landed at this site.

    The V-22 has a maximum rotor downwash speed of over 80 knots (92 mph; 150 km/h), more than the 64-knot (74 mph; 119 km/h) lower limit of a hurricane!!!

  20. Burgers for breakfast? Maybe if your 10. Adults have double bacon cheeseburgers for breakfast and I shower in Mountain Dew. It’s good for my skin

  21. It’s a good thing the Americans nor the MOD listen to you. If it weren’t for the American security blanket we’d be taken it up the arse from comrade Vlad.

    • That’s what I was thinking. One of those mats could have blown up and down into the rotors….well perhaps not… but it looked like it from the film. Isn’t the pilot in some way responsible too for landing in an area with hazards on the ground? Seems a lack of failure all round. Surely the Osprey had to get permission to land in the city centre – why was that given?

  23. Looking at the video, the matting seemed to have been assembled from a lot of smaller sections. I would describe it as using carpet tiles rather that a roll of carpet.
    As others have said, between USAF and UK MOD, I think Addenbrooks will end up with a far better and more fit for purpose site than they currently have.

  25. Good Morning Gents. A freezing 18 degrees C(it’s all relative) 🙂 and raining here in Durban today. Two things-as most of you have said Helipad not fit for purpose even given for the Ospreys heavy footprint. Second, in the discussion regarding a possible airstrip for Tristan da Cunha, the subject of commercial VSTOL’s came up as a future option. Do any of you boffins have any knowledge in this regard or know of work on such an aircraft going forward? I know there are big challenges but it would be a game changer not only for isolated communities but for aviation generally.

    • Well the AW609 is in the pipeline for small scale commercial VTOL (6-9 passengers) and on a larger scale Leonardo / AgustaWestland are also supposed to be developing the “Next-Generation Civil Tiltrotor” or NGCTR as a technology demonstrator proposed to first fly in 2023. I’m not sure if Bell plans to develop a civil variant of the V-280.

  26. Compared to what the people the Rhine had to put up with at the hands of BAOR. We have no reason to complain at the US miltary.

  27. I am disappointed by the childish tone of this, and many other comments on this site. I read the site because I want to know what’s going on in the Defence world, and value the input from the many defence ex-professionals who make adult contributions.

  28. One of the challenges of the V22 design is the prop rotors are smaller then a normal rotor, meaning high disk loading, which means it needs more power for a given weight and the down draught is much more powerful….

  31. Brilliant, who didn’t pin down the trackway properly?

    As you can see in the video, the Osprey landed on the grass beside the small helipad. The person doing the project for the helipad should have been working to a spec where they include the heaviest helicopter likely to use the pad, i.e. a Chinook or if in the UK a Sea Stallion. They are then supposed to secure the trackway in accordance with the max weight takeoff downdraught that these helicopters can generate. The Chinook will generate a gusting 70 knot wind either side of the aircraft where the blades first intermesh. The Osprey is only just behind the Chinook in generated downdraught, whereas the Sea Stallion is quite a ways behind. Therefore, the trackway should have been able to resist it. Clearly it didn’t, so whoever was part of the project who wrote the specifications, needs to hang their head in shame, for cocking up a such a simple job!

  34. Just for some context around what it’s worth spending money on. The air ambulance service only use the lighter end of the medium rotor spectrum. Across the whole nation there are only around 70 missions per day. The NHS ambulance trusts respond to around 20,000 calls per day and make around 13,000 transfers to ED departments every day.

    So why would any sane NHS manger piss away money to create helipads that can be used by a vehicle that not even our own Military have. There is no magic money tree In the NHS and healthcare spending in this country has never been a priority (We all think it’s a magic right that just happens). So every pound we spend on one thing is a pound no spent on something else.

    This is something to think on..the health service would need an extra 3.5 billion of infrastructure spending per year to come up to the same standard of capital expenditure as other peer nations( OECD average) and we spend around half of what other western nations do on health infrastructure. As of 2019 the NHS had a back log of around about 6 Billion pound of critical infrastructure repairs needed, half of which was very high or high risk ( so would likely cause a number of deaths).

    So for me it would be new ambulances, diagnostic equipment or repairing the roof so it does not fall on patients ( seen this, closed the beds) every time and a heli pad would be the minimum possible spend I could get away with.

    Its also worth noting that air ambulance is so niche is not something the NHS pays for, all the air ambulances are charities. But they do save a good number of lives in that niche. So one thing you all can do is if you have posted on this page it set up an annual direct debit to support you local air ambulance.

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