An accident involving a special Air Force vehicle leaves two permanently disabled

An Air Force officer and noncommissioned officer both suffered catastrophic injuries when the rugged all-terrain rescue vehicle they were riding in overturned and they were ejected from the vehicle during an exercise in the Northern Mariana Islands in early 2023. An accident investigation board found that the driver, a Special Operations Forces captain, was speeding, had no training in operating the vehicle and told the photographer riding with him not to wear her seatbelt “because it was only a five-minute ride” when he crashed the SRTV-SXV Tactical Vehicle, a beefy dune buggy used by Air Force parachute rescue teams in rough terrain.

The driver, a captain of the Tactical Air Control Party (TACP) stationed in Hawaii, was paralyzed from the waist down. The photographer, a staff sergeant of the 1st Combat Camera Squadron, eventually had to have her right leg amputated above the knee, and she also suffered a broken pelvis and severe internal bleeding. The accident occurred during COPE North, a two-week multinational exercise around Guam in February 2023.

But in the chaotic aftermath of the crash, there was also heroism. A young Air Force firefighter who was one of the first on the scene later received the Air Force’s highest award for firefighter heroism. Senior Airman Ethan Embrey was the first to notice the photographer’s dire condition and radioed the local airfield to request that another aircraft be grounded so she could be flown to Guam on an emergency flight.

While an Air Force board of inquiry that reviewed the accident was unable to assign direct blame for the February 2023 accident, the findings make it clear that the captain at the helm acted well outside safety and training rules and may have lied to investigators about the incident.

The officer told investigators that a senior paramedic in charge of the SRTV gave him two hours of “training” on the vehicle the day before the accident, “but this was not documented in the officer’s training records.” However, the senior paramedic told the panel that he did not train anyone on the vehicle during COPE North and that he did not believe the captain received any training on the SRTV during COPE North or in the weeks prior.

Speeding on a World War II road

The accident occurred as the TACP was piloting the SRTV-SXV (short for Search And Rescue Tactical Vehicle-Side by Vehicle) down a narrow, overgrown road toward Chulu Beach on the north end of Tinian, a small island about 160 miles north of Guam. The TACP was en route to a pararescue team training session.

The photographer was there to take pictures of the exercise for Air Force public relations. As is standard practice in accident investigations, no one who was involved in the accident or interviewed afterward was identified in the report.

The event was a Full Mission Profile (FMP) where the rescue team was tasked with rescuing a downed pilot from hiding near Chulu Beach. To reach the pilot, the rescue team would drop from helicopters into the waters off the beach, then go ashore and locate the pilot.

“The team would encounter enemy contact and (the TACP) would coordinate close air support fire from MQ-9 Reaper drones and MH-60S helicopters,” the report said. However, the TACP “was not qualified in the planned entry and exit techniques and would join the (PJs) as they arrived on the beach.”

However, to get from Tinian Airfield to the beach that afternoon, the TACP decided to drive themselves and the photographer in the SRTV-SXV that the PJ team had brought from the 31st Rescue Squadron at Kadena Air Base, Japan. A civilian rental vehicle had already left to take the “pilot” to their hideout.

The officer was neither trained nor authorized to drive the bulky emergency vehicle, and the photographer told investigators she had never ridden in one before. Sitting in the passenger seat, she immediately realized she did not know how to fasten her seatbelt. But, she told the committee, the officer told her “because it was only a 5-minute ride, they did not need to wear seatbelts,” according to the report.

The report said that riding in an SRTV required “boots, trousers, gloves, eye protection, helmet and seat belts.” The driver did not tell the photographer any of this.

The remote road to the beach was dilapidated, overgrown and “had not been improved or repaved since its original construction in World War II,” the report said. Leaves struck the photographer in the face as they drove at 40 to 50 miles per hour, the board found. The photographer told investigators, “She developed a nervous feeling about the speed (of the vehicle) and requested (the driver) to slow down several times; however, (the captain) did not acknowledge or respond to this request.”

Although there was no speed limit on the lightly traveled road, local police told investigators that the maximum safe speed on the road was likely 15 MPH. The speed limit at all training sites on Guam, where COPE North was stationed, is 35 MPH.

As they approached a curve toward the beach, the driver claimed “there was a problem with the steering and the side of (the photographer’s) vehicle got stuck in the bushes, causing (him) to overcorrect and then put (his own) side of the vehicle into the bushes.”

As they turned, the vehicle overturned and the driver and passenger were ejected. Both said they could not remember the exact moment of impact.

SRTV is powerful but “nervous” to drive

The SRTV is a specialized vehicle made by BC Customs, a Utah-based vehicle manufacturer, for Air Force special operations teams. Although it is hefty and designed for difficult terrain, it is not easy or intuitive to drive, the report said. It has a very fast steering system that can “lock” into lateral movements with less than a full turn of the steering wheel. As a result, even small steering wheel movements can cause large movements of the vehicle, especially at high speeds.

PJs told the panel that driving was “not user-friendly” and that the vehicle was “very different from other vehicles”, especially at high speed.

CB Customs describes the steering as “nervous.”

In addition to its sensitive steering, the SRTV is, perhaps counterintuitively, prone to tipping over. The size and shape of the body was designed to fit a V-22 Osprey, which limits its width.

In tests on flat concrete, the report said, the SRTV-SXV had a tendency to tip over when driven with average turns above 38 mph. A modification to the wheels that some rescue teams installed themselves increased that speed to 39 mph, the report said, but Air Force officials recommended that teams not use those modifications because of the increased wear and tear.

In response to the Air Force’s concerns about rollovers, BC Custom pointed out that the Air Force’s rollovers were not due to vehicle defects, but rather to user error, the report said, stemming from a lack of understanding of the vehicle’s design and function, as well as its intended use.

Whether the captain had received two hours of instruction or not, it would not have been enough. The rescue team members were not considered qualified to drive the SRTV-SXV until they completed a five-day in-person course at CB Custom’s Utah facility, the report said.

Heroism of first responders

A local woman found the crash site and rushed to find the officers, initially encountering an airfield fire department unit, which included Senior Airman Embrey.

“At first I thought it was part of the drill,” Embrey said in an Air Force news release. “But when she told me it was real, I jumped out of the truck, grabbed my personal first aid kit and headed to the scene.”

At the scene of the accident, Embrey said, both the driver and passenger were conscious. Emergency services gathered around the driver, who said he couldn’t feel his legs, and only one security guard was with the photographer. “Only one person helped her,” Embrey said.

“I told the security guard to check her from head to waist while I checked her from waist to feet because I saw something sticking out of her boot,” Embrey said. “Her bone broke through the skin on her ankle. I was about to splint and wrap her leg when she said, ‘My stomach hurts.’ She was already showing an altered mental state, so I knew something was wrong.”

The stomach pain, he realized, could be an indication of internal bleeding.

“I saw a black spot on the right side of her navel, which is the first sign of internal bleeding,” Embrey said.

Since there was no hospital on the island, Embrey knew she had to get to Guam as quickly as possible. He thought back to the airfield where a C-130 had just landed.

“I immediately report it’s internal bleeding and tell them to stop the plane because it’s preparing to take off,” Embrey said. “She must be on the plane that just landed.”

The C-130 remained on the ground while Embrey and other helpers took the photographer to the airfield in a truck.

“I stood over her to make sure she wasn’t shaking in the bed of the truck,” Embrey said. During the ride, the woman lost the pulse in her feet and arms, signs that she was going into shock because she was losing blood internally. “It was as if a large ice cream scoop had ripped a chunk out of her left thigh, and instead of gushing out, the blood was flowing back into the stomach cavity.”

Once on board the C-130, the woman was flown to Guam and from there quickly on to Hawaii.