The Osprey was engulfed in smoke and fire when Cpl. Spencer Collart, the aircraft's crew chief, rushed back into the burning wreckage in an attempt to save the two Marine pilots trapped inside.
Before it crashed, the fuel-heavy aircraft nearly collided with the other Osprey it was trailing, causing it to bank three times before descending nose-down toward the trees on Melville Island, a spit north of mainland Australia, a recently released investigation revealed. The trees sheared off the Osprey's tail as it descended, and Maj. Tobin Lewis, one of the pilots, gripped the controls with both hands in an attempt to level the aircraft and slow its speed.
Collart was situated in the tunnel of the aircraft, behind the two pilots, the other being Capt. Eleanor LeBeau. Witnesses described the Osprey skimming along the trees for "a couple of long seconds" before hitting the ground, skidding and kicking up a "wave" of dirt.
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As the crew chief, Collart was responsible for the safety and readiness of the 22 other Marines on the Osprey, including the pilots. When it crashed, he tried heroically to fulfill that duty. Driven by knowing it was the right thing to do, his father said, Collart rushed back into the burning aircraft to try and rescue the pilots, at the cost of his own life.
Despite his efforts, LeBeau and Lewis perished in the crash, but the other 20 Marines survived. In an email Monday, the Marine Corps confirmed that it will be posthumously awarding Collart the Navy and Marine Corps Medal, the services' highest noncombat award for acts of valor.
"I have people come and say, 'Oh, you did a great job of raising your son to be a hero,'" Bart Collart, Spencer's father, told Military.com in a phone interview Tuesday about his son's attempt to save the trapped pilots. "I don't know if I can take credit for that or not. I just think Spencer, that's just the way he was. He cared so much about people, and I know he cared about his friends."
Earlier this month, the Collarts heard a familiar call at their door. It had been nearly a year since Marines entered their home to inform them that their son -- a tall, former high school athlete and Arlington, Virginia, native -- had been killed as a result of the crash.
During that year, Collart was honored at a vigil held at the family's home and at Arlington National Cemetery, where they received a folded flag from a military officer. His passing also brought the Collarts into a community of Osprey survivors, which offered communal support and relief to the grieving family.
But it wasn't until a Sunday afternoon in early August, after a long year of unanswered questions about the crash, that the Collarts learned of Spencer's heroic actions. And that he did not die in the initial impact but escaped the aircraft "whole," as his father put it, only to risk his life to save those still trapped inside.
Collart "egressed through the crew door of the [aircraft] and then heroically reentered the burning cockpit of the aircraft in an attempt to rescue the trapped pilots," said the investigation report, which was relayed to the family by four Marines during the visit. "He perished during this effort."
Collart's father said that his son's friends and family, some of whom had called in via Zoom to hear the briefing, were shocked by the initial news. It became difficult to hear the rest of the briefing in the wake of the information, and the Marine briefers, mostly officers accompanied by a crew chief who knew Collart, suggested a break.
Eventually, after the initial shock wore off, the gathered family and friends realized they weren't surprised by Collart's heroism.
"To be honest with you, we both came away feeling better about it after this than we did going into it." Bart Collart said of his and his wife's reaction to the news about their son. "The fact that he went in on his own -- that was his choice to go back in -- and somehow that made us both feel better, the fact that he went in for all the right reasons and trying to help people."
Bart Collart also wants to see due credit to the pilots, he said.
"I don't know exactly what happened in those fleeting seconds when they had to react to a bad situation," he said of Lewis and LeBeau, whom his son looked up to and revered, he added. "But those pilots managed to get that thing on the ground in such a way that everybody survived the initial crash."
Collart joined the Marine Corps in 2020 and served as a crew chief, a highly respected role in the aviation community. At the vigil held last year, family, friends and well-wishers remembered the 21-year-old as someone who would always pick up the phone, who was selfless, and who was also a tough older brother, his sister Gwyneth said.
"He was the one that would go up and down and pull [the Marines'] straps to make sure they were buckled down," Greg O'Dell, an elder from the Cherrydale Baptist Church where Collart attended, said at his vigil, recalling the last conversation he had with the crew chief.
"He was the one, if they needed to bail out, he would open the back door and start bailing them out," the pastor said. "He protected his Marines that came onto that Osprey, and so did the pilots."
According to the investigation and his family, Collart embodied that role with a high degree of professionalism, with some witnesses of the crash describing him as a "seasoned crew chief."
"He could be a knucklehead with the best of them and goof around when you wanted to," Bart Collart said. "But he took his job so seriously. ... He wanted to know everything there was to know about it. And he embraced the platform. He loved that Osprey."
Witnesses saw Collart exit the burning wreckage as the team was attempting to account for all the Marines. At one point, they realized two were missing -- the pilots. Before he went back in, Collart left his tether, which had bound him to the aircraft during flight, unburned on the ground outside the wreckage. It was a sign to investigators that he exited unscathed but chose to go back in.
"Cpl. Collart's heroic actions evinced the highest standards of courage and dedication to his fellow Marines," a spokesperson for I Marine Expeditionary Force told Military.com in a statement Tuesday. "We will continue to honor his legacy and celebrate his life."
When asked why it took a year for the family to find out about Collart's act of bravery, the spokesperson pointed to the time it takes to conduct aviation mishap investigations.
"Investigations take varying amounts of time to complete, depending on the level of complexity," he said. "The Marine Corps thoroughly investigates all mishaps to identify the causes, learn from them, and take action to reduce the chances of future mishaps."
Bart Collart told Military.com that Spencer's headstone at Arlington will be updated to reflect his posthumous award. The Marine Corps said that the award has been signed and approved.
Collart's father said that, while the year has been filled with unknowns and grief, the tragedy has also brought unexpected bright moments into their lives. One such moment was the marriage of their daughter Gwyneth to Cpl. Jonah Waser, a Marine and close friend of their son's who helped carry his remains from Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, last year.
While questions still loom for the Marine Corps and its sister services about the safety of the Osprey, given its troubled maintenance and crash history, the Collarts choose to focus on the positives, though they remain concerned for the new Marines in their lives who continue to use the aircraft.
"We have so many sons and daughters now who are on the Osprey and are Marines," Bart Collart said. "The jobs are just dangerous jobs."
Tragedy has brought them together with so many other families who have faced it themselves, such as the Strickland family who lost their son Evan, a close friend of Collart's who died in an Osprey crash in 2022. Collart had been a pallbearer at his funeral.
"It's been a tough year. It's hard losing your son and [being] reminded of it every single day," Bart Collart said.
Reflecting on the grieving process and the new connections formed through the loss of his son, Bart Collart added, "That's one of the amazing things about such a tragic thing happening. I never anticipated it bearing so much fruit. That's not the things that you anticipate at all ... and it's all because of Spencer."
