Steve Torpey

So as we were crashing, I felt him pulling up on the collective.

And I remember looking up at the torque of the aircraft, and that's basically how much power we're pulling.

And I remember seeing 130%.

Our limit was 127.

I honestly, I only got a glimpse of it because I also was looking at our altimeter, which was telling us we're at 30 feet.

And I remember thinking initially, we can't break the helicopter.

I don't want to pull that much power.

And then realizing...

I'm fighting the captain a little bit.

And then my next recollection was, he's right.

We need to not die right now.

So what happened is we recovered and then started climbing up and we got back up to 100 feet.

And we had to take a minute just to kind of recenter ourselves.

But at that point, I could see the survivors.

We had smoke flares in the water.

And I said, the corniest thing I've ever said is, all right, guys, let's get to work.

And I remember thinking, oh, that sounded really dumb.

Yeah, the collective is a lever that's in your left hand.

And it goes up and down, and it basically changes the power on the aircraft.

It changes the pitch of the rotor blades.