I agree with your post oggers.
The counter argument goes "ah but you were trained properly by the military; whereas Collins received half arsed training superimposed on a flawed infrastructure, and he didn't know what he didn't know. And there was a precedent already established to fly low VFR".
To which we reply even IF one accepts all of that, Collins still made some very bad errors of judgement and professionalism, which were significant casual factors in the accident by themselves.