When Evan Strickland was 13, he stood in line with his father for 30 minutes in the New Mexico summer sun for the chance to sit in the cockpit of a V-22 Osprey, a unique twin-rotor aircraft used by the U.S. military.
Looking at the photo now, Evan’s father, Wayland Strickland, choked up. “You think about it a little bit more in hindsight,” he said.
By 2022, Evan Strickland was 19 and a Marine Corps lance corporal stationed in California. He loved to play saxophone, dance for his fellow Marines to make them laugh, and had planned to elope with his girlfriend. On June 8, he headed out for his first flight as a crew chief on an Osprey.
His mother, Michelle Strickland, got a message on Facebook that day from a friend who asked, “Have you heard from Evan?”
“And I’m like, ‘No,’” Michelle recalled. “She tells me, ‘Call him.’”
Evan didn’t answer the phone. Wayland Strickland said he told his wife not to invite trouble by worrying. He was heading to bed when he heard a “blood-curdling scream.” Michelle had opened the front door to see two Marines.
“From that second on your heart is always broken,” Wayland said.
From March 2022 to November 2023, 20 service members died in four fatal Osprey crashes. The U.S. military grounded the entire fleet of about 400 V-22 Ospreys used by the Navy, Marines and Air Force after the crash of an Air Force Special Operations Command Osprey off Japan last November killed eight airmen. The military says it has identified and believes it has solved a recurrent problem with the clutch in the Osprey’s rotor gearbox that contributed to at least one crash, but it has still not determined root causes for the Osprey’s problems — and is weighing a return to operation for the aircraft.
After her son’s fatal crash, Michelle Strickland was comforted by Evan’s Marine friends, whom she called her “bonus Marines.” One of them, Cpl. Spencer Collart, had served as a pallbearer for Evan.
A little over a year after…
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