Aircraft crash that killed 3 US Marines in Australia caused by near mid-air collision, safety violations: investigation

An Osprey crash that killed three Marines during a training exercise in Australia narrowly avoided a mid-air collision caused by pilot errors before it went down last year — as more revelations came out about the tragedy in a military report Friday.

The tragic Aug. 27, 2023, crash that claimed the lives of pilots Capt. Eleanor V. LeBeau, 29, and Maj. Tobin J. Lewis, 37, as well as crew chief Cpl. Spencer R. Collart, came amid a “culture that disregarded safety of flight” that squadron leadership allowed to linger, the report said.

While LeBeau and Lewis, the aircraft commander, were killed in the crash, Collart, 21, was killed after he “heroically re-entered the burning cockpit of the aircraft in an attempt to rescue the trapped pilots,” military investigators said.

Twenty other service members who were in the back of the aircraft survived.

The accident happened as two Ospreys, which can fly as planes or helicopters, were flying low on a final landing approach during the multinational training exercise.

As one chopper followed the other, the lead aircraft reduced power without telling the trailing one. The second Osprey did not sense how quickly the gap between the two was closing and reacted with a steep bank to avoid crashing into the lead helicopter.

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The pilot entered two more steep banks where it encountered a 20-knot tailwind and eventually stalled out, causing it to go down, the report found.

During the doomed few minutes, the aircraft commander should have taken control of the situation sooner, the report also found.

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The fatal accident exposed grave safety issues in the Hawaii-based squadron that could lead to possible court-martial charges for one senior squadron member and potential administrative actions against the squadron’s former commanding officer, Lt. Col. Joe Whitefield, who the report alleged, “permitted a culture that disregarded safety of flight procedures.”

An unnamed senior maintenance officer was slapped with a Uniform Code of Military Justice violation for dereliction of duty and for falsely generating and signing a form that reported the aircraft’s weight and loads after the crash.

There were multiple issues leading up to the aircrafts taking off, including two lesser accidents that included another near-miss that was tied to weight and load issues three weeks before, investigators said.

Those issues should have been warning signs, but did not lead Whitefield to call for a standdown to probe larger safety problems, per the report. By not taking action, it “directly contributed to the failure to execute required safety of flight and weight and power procedures” on Aug. 27, the investigators found.

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Lewis, the aircraft commander, served as the in-flight instructor for the pilot flying the lead Osprey and also the aircraft commander on his own Osprey. But he didn’t check in on mission planning briefs that laid out the flight or review other details tied to the exercise before the flight, the report stated.

Both Ospreys had 2,000 pounds more fuel than was planned and only had estimates of how much each troop in the back weighed. The weight of the aircraft can play a crucial role in how safely it operates.

The downed Osprey also had incomplete maintenance that should have prevented it from taking off, though those problems did not factor into the crash, the investigation determined.

The deaths of the three Marines “continues to be felt across the Marine Corps,” the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force said in a statement Friday.

The crash last August is one of four fatal accidents to happen in the past two years involving the Osprey.

With Post wires

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