Marine Osprey crash victim to be honored

We should all be familiar with the V-22 Osprey’s track record of fatal crashes – it’s getting to the point where I feel everyone who gets in one should be cited for bravery. This is about one crash in particular – the Marine crash which killed Spencer Collart and two others. But it didn’t.

Collart was the crew chief on an Osprey which went down in Australia in August off 2023.

Spencer Collart’s Osprey had crashed during an Australian military exercise, killing him and Capt. Eleanor LeBeau and aircraft commander Maj. Tobin Lewis. For months, that’s all his parents knew. Then, last week, the Marines came back, to brief their findings.

Collart was a man who knew how dangerous the crew chief’s job could be, and kept flying.

He got his top assignment choice and met his two best friends, Lance Cpl. Evan Strickland and Cpl. Jonah Waser. They spent a year together training to become crew chiefs, enlisted Marines responsible for the aircraft and its passengers. There’s a photo of them posing with their class on April 22, 2022, the day they earned their wings.

This was the kind of man we all want in the service – motivated.

In the Osprey, Spencer spent most of the flight in the “tunnel,” the area right behind the pilot and co-pilot, learning from them, with a goal to become a pilot himself. When Spencer’s personal effects arrived after his death, Bart Collart found his son’s Marine Corps camouflage cap, known as a cover. He put it on and metal nudged his forehead.

Spencer had pinned a 2nd lieutenant’s gold “butter bar” and a set of pilot’s wings into the band.

“He put these in here to remind himself every time he put his cap on of his next goal,” Bart Collart said. “He was all in. He walked the walk, he talked the talk, and he was just, he just loved it so much.”

The crash occurred in Australia in August 2023.

On August 27, 2023, two Marines came to the Collart’s door.

Spencer Collart’s Osprey had crashed during an Australian military exercise, killing him and Capt. Eleanor LeBeau and aircraft commander Maj. Tobin Lewis. For months, that’s all his parents knew. Then, last week, the Marines came back, to brief their findings.

Seconds after the Osprey hit the ground, the aircraft filled with smoke and flames. Collart had been standing in the tunnel even as the plane was going down. Most of the 23 troops on board escaped out the back, including a commander who told investigators he saw Collart escape out a side door.

I think about 99% would be thanking God they survived at this point, right?

A site team later found Collart’s tether – what he’d use to latch onto the Osprey to move around during flight – undamaged outside the aircraft.

But not everyone made it out. The pilots were still inside. The Osprey had crashed nose first, and they were trapped.

Collart went back. Investigators believe he may have unbuckled Lewis from his restraints before he succumbed.

A crashed and burning craft – and he went back in. And died. He was safely out of the crash – but went back into it to try and rescue his pilot friends.

For his valor, Collart will be posthumously awarded the service’s highest noncombat award: the Navy and Marine Corps Medal. It is an honor awarded for acts of heroism at great risk to the service member’s life.

Believe it or not, there actually is a ray of light from this story.

Spencer’s family met Waser for the first time at the funeral. This time it was Waser who put on dress blues to serve as a pallbearer and escort his best friend’s remains from Dover Air Force Base to Arlington National Cemetery.

Spencer’s younger sister, Gwyneth Collart, felt instant chemistry. Her parents saw it too.

“As soon as I met him, I was like, this is not the time or the place to be falling in love,” Gwyneth Collart said of Waser. “Grieving will never be easy, but he made grieving a little bit more comfortable to do. And he just, I mean, he took my breath away.”

Months later, Waser asked her father for Gwyneth’s hand.

Gwyneth Collart and Waser married July 6 in Arlington and held their reception at Top of the Town, a ballroom that has a terrace overlooking Arlington National Cemetery. They could see the section where Spencer was buried, and Gwyneth pinned her brother’s portrait to her bouquet.  ABC7NY

Category: Arlington National Cemetary, Marine Corps