Mike Durant

The centrifugal force is driving his whole upper body to spin away from the axis of rotation.

So he gets one to idle and gets one about halfway off.

So when we hit the ground, we're still spinning.

But somehow, pure luck, amazing skill, pick your number, we crash on the wheels.

And that's the only reason I'm still, that's the only reason any of us survived.

If you crash on the side, upside down, we're all dead, for sure.

But we crashed on the wheels, yet we're still spinning.

So there was some torque left in the airframe.

It ripped the right landing gear off.

I remember laying there on the ground, looking back, and I'm like...

Holy shit.

I mean, I didn't know there was enough force in the world to rip that off.

I mean, there's a gigantic metal attaching point at the upper portion of the strut on a landing gear, the front landing gear on a blackout.

There's a picture of one right there, you know, has, and it's completely ripped off.

I mean, just, and you know, when we hit my seat, which has shock absorbers in it,

which helped, but it had enough vertical impact to crush my seat and everything underneath it.

And I'm sitting in a hole, basically, because my seat is completely collapsed.

My right femur snapped in two on the edge of the seat.

The only explanation I have for that is I had my M9 in a low-slung holster right there, so it added some weight to my leg.

I can't think of any other reason why my right femur would have broken off because it wasn't any bruising.