Alan C. Mack

This thing comes through.

The screens all go blank.

And you know how your desktop computer, especially your older ones, you can hear the fan?

You know, the cooling fan?

Well, all these black boxes have cooling fans, so they make a lot of noise.

And all of a sudden, they're just spooling down.

And I'm like, oh.

That's even worse.

But the rotor blades are still spinning.

So the engines will run in what's called a reversionary mode.

It's a backup mode.

So I can still fly.

So we're in the middle of an engagement here where we can't defend ourselves.

So we go to take off.

And that's when Neil Roberts, who was getting out of the aircraft at the time, he was not plugged into the communication system.

And he fell out with my crew chief.

So the crew chief fell out, but he had a tether attached.

so oh my gosh he was able to be retrieved uh so we dove down the mountain trying to get out of the enemy fire regain rotor rpm and my intention is to crash on the floor below you know a controlled crash because i got one engine i think yeah and the crew chiefs are telling me sir we've both engines are running you can level off like are you sure right because i have no indications in the cockpit and there's yeah yeah we hear both engines so i

Pulling the power, we level off.

And now they tell me, you know, Neil fell out the back.