After waking an unconscious Marine inside the flaming wreckage of their MV-22 Osprey, Capt. Joshua C. Watson rallied his Marines and called for accountability.
His team had been in the rear of the twin-propeller Osprey as it approached a landing at a remote airfield near Darwin, Australia, when it plummeted to the ground after a near-mid-air collision. As Watson yelled to his Marines to get out, fuel spread and immediately ignited, making the crash site an inferno.
Pulling his Marines together, he found that one was in critical condition, another needed immediate care and three were missing.
And, Watson realized, his ankle was broken.
Top non-combat award
Watson was awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Medal last week, the Department of the Navy’s highest non-combat award for heroism, for his actions in the 2023 Osprey crash in Australia that killed three. Watson received the award at a ceremony at Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida.
The crash came Aug. 23, 2023, as Watson’s Lima Company prepared to practice seizing two airfields at once. Lima’s commander would lead a force of about 70 Marines on one airfield, while Watson, the company’s executive officer, would lead a smaller force of 38 to take Pickertaramoor Airfield on Melville Island, about 45 miles north of Darwin, Australia, according to an after action report Watson wrote that was published on The Connecting File substack. Training in Darwin is a regular rotation for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force. For the infil, Watson’s 38 Marines were split between two Ospreys.
But as the two aircraft approached the remote airfield, the lead Osprey rapidly slowed down, nearly causing the second plane to run into it in mid-air. The pilots of Watson’s plane veered their Osprey away from the collision but the maneuver, combined with a strong tailwind and the added weight of Watson’s Marines, made the plane uncontrollable and it rapidly fell from the sky.
Watson was one of 19 Marines and one Navy sailor squeezed in the rear of the second Osprey. As the plane began to fall, the crew gave the hand signal to the Marines to “brace,” or lean forward in their seats to absorb a coming impact.
Watson passed the signal and yelled the order to his Marines, but realized that his radio operator was not responding. As the plane descended, Watson grabbed the Marine and shoved him into a brace position.
Then the plane hit.
“Anything that was not strapped down became a projectile flying from the rear to front of the aircraft,” Watson wrote in his report. “I could not see the Marine seated five feet across from me, nor could I see out of the rear ramp of the aircraft. Heavy flames, thick smoke, spraying fluid, dirt, dust, gear, and aircraft wreckage made visibility extremely poor.”
Almost immediately, a fuel leak ignited the ground around the plane.
“The heat from the fire was overwhelming,” Watson wrote. “The only light piercing through the smoke came from the rear of the aircraft and this soon became the primary exit.”
In the shock of the moment, many of the Marines did not immediately move.
“After noticing that nobody was really moving, I directed the Marines to ‘leave everything and get out the back of the aircraft,’” Watson said in a Marine Corps news release.
As the platoon began to pile out of the rear of the plane, Watson saw that his radio operator was not moving. He shook him until he awoke and got him moving towards the exit.
“As I unstrapped and untangled myself, I began to pass off my radio operator to another Marine towards the rear exit,” Watson said. Then, alone, he checked the rest of the burning plane, looking under the troop seats, for others who might have been out cold.
“I went to ensure no one remained trapped,” he said.
As he left, though, he encountered a remarkable sight: one of the Osprey’s crew chiefs was pinned under the plane’s ramp as flames rapidly engulfed the wreckage.
“Still standing at the rear of the aircraft from which the fire was rapidly spreading, I witnessed the rear member of the aircrew who was pinned underneath the fuselage of the plane and severely injured, being cut free and buddy dragged to safety by my Marines who had come back to his rescue,” Watson wrote in the report.
Accounting for missing Marines in the dark
Once out, Watson rallied his Marines and took accountability. As medics began to work on the most seriously injured, he sent those who could walk in search of the three Marines who had not immediately come together. All of the Lima Company Marines were quickly found, but both of the plane’s pilots and the front crew chief were still missing.
Watson sent two Marines to circle the plane, in case the aircrew had — as they are trained — rallied off the nose of the aircraft.
Unknown to Watson at the time, all three of the aircrew died almost immediately after the crash.
Notably, the eventual crash investigation found that Cpl. Spencer R. Collart, the missing crew chief, had survived the initial impact, but perished in an attempt to reach the plane’s pilots, who he knew were trapped in the cockpit but were, investigators concluded, likely already dead.
Collart “heroically re-entered the burning cockpit of the aircraft in an attempt to rescue the trapped pilots,” according to the investigation. His autopsy showed “higher levels of combustion product inhalation.”
Pilots Maj. Tobin J. Lewis, 37, and Capt. Eleanor V. LeBeau, 29, died in the crash with Collart, who was posthumously awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Medal.
Outside the plane, Watson quickly realized the company was effectively cut off.
Though the sky was full of Marine aircraft, including the second Osprey, AH-1Z Viper gunships and UH-1 Venoms — the modern version of Vietnam-era Hueys — there was nowhere to land in the thick forest where they’d crashed. The only clearing was the airfield they had been flying towards, two kilometers away.
Watson ordered Lima Company to pull back 100 meters from the burning plane while he began making radio calls.
“I was able to establish communication with the overhead helicopters and pass a SITREP, accountability, and my intent: to hold everyone in place, stabilize casualties, and execute a search for survivors,” Watson wrote in the after action report.
The other Marines from Lima Company, Watson wrote, had landed at the airfield two kilometers away, but had not deployed.
And they were not happy about it.
“The Marines were kept onboard and not allowed to leave their seats,” Watson wrote. “While frustrating to those who had just witnessed the second aircraft crash, the decision to keep them onboard versus allowing them to try and locate the crash site and assist was the right call.”
About 45 minutes later, Australian soldiers arrived at the crash site and, soon after, civilian medical helicopters arrived overhead, hoisting rescuers down to the Marines to evacuate their most critically injured. Eventually, Australian army ground vehicles reached the site, and began ferrying the rest of Lima to the airfield. Five hours after the crash, Watson and two other leaders were the last Marines out.
“Almost everyone was injured in the crash, but we didn’t realize the severity due to the shock, we kept checking on each other because we didn’t know the true conditions of everyone,” said Watson in the news release. “Self-aid was critical. My Marines being solid in Tactical Combat Casualty Care was essential.”
Watson remains in the Marines, though he’s switched jobs since the crash. Though he was an infantry officer with Lima Company, he’s now stationed at Pensacola where he’s training to be a Marine Corps aviator.
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