Mike Durant

I mean, that was the whining that I heard.

And the guy that was behind us, I believe what he said was, it looked like your tail rotor turned into vapor.

I mean, he said it just completely disintegrated.

And when that happened, we're still fairly slow.

And that's the death sentence.

Because if you lose your tail rotor and you're going fast, the airflow over the fuselage is going to keep that tail from kicking around.

The wind is going to basically push it like a weather vane.

But if you're slow, there's not enough push from that wind to keep the torque of the engine from spinning you around.

So we start to spin.

And initially, I mean, I've been flying these things for years.

I got a fair amount of flight time.

I felt like they were part of me.

I'm looking at my feet like, am I doing the right thing here?

Because it's the pedals that control this left-right movement, basically, when you're at slow airspeed.

And I'm having to convince myself, no, you're doing the right thing.

The aircraft's not responding correctly.

And Ray and I reached the conclusion instantaneously, we've lost the tail.

And now we're in a flat spin.

And I know it's maybe getting into too much weeds here.

No, no, you're not.