Steve Torpey

So I literally counted two Mississippis.

I said it in my head.

And I said, drop, drop, drop.

They threw the flares out the door.

And that's when things went sideways.

I must have pulled back too much or a wind gust caught.

I don't know what happened.

But the aircraft's nose was 30 degrees nose up.

I'm going backwards at over 40 knots.

I have no idea what's behind me.

And I'm crashing through 100 feet, going down.

And I remember recovering at 30 feet while I'm still going backwards.

And my fear was I was going to back into a wave.

And everybody is screaming.

I went from 30 degrees nose up to 30 degrees nose down, a 60 degree pitch change.

I've never done that before in this aircraft.

And I remember just pulling up the collective.

And prior to getting out there, Captain Lefevre and I had agreed that he's going to help me with the collective.

We rarely share the controls, but...

In this case, he was going to help me negotiate the wave heights by adding power with the collective, having us climb up to clear the waves.