Steve Torpey

The flight mechanic is the hoist operator.

So he's got a control in his hand.

He's holding onto the cable, trying to keep the cable and the basket under control.

And they also experienced another remarkable occurrence is that they came within six feet of the water.

They had tried to hold a 100-foot hover thereabouts, and the flight mechanic later said he could see the wave come within six feet of the aircraft at one point.

And I'm sure that stress added up with the heat exhaustion and just wiped them out.

Well, one of the things that helped us a great deal is as the first aircraft was flying home, they recommended a few things we do.

They said, take an extra flight mechanic, have an extra person on the aircraft.

So instead of four, we had five people on board.

Take more smoke flares, take more chem lights and take some sandbags because their basket was.

The first aircraft's basket was getting blown so severely by the wind, it was really hard to control.

So the thought was they put a heavy sandbag in it.

It might help control it.

So we had gamed this out before we even got in the helicopter.

Captain Lefevre, myself, and Fred Kalt, our flight mechanic, Lee Honnold, and Mike Fish all kind of gathered together real quick, kind of a pre-flight briefing.

And we talked about all the things we can do

that were recommended by the first aircraft and anything else we could think of to try to put the odds more in our favor.

The only thing we didn't discuss is which pilot was going to sit in which seat.

Captain Lefevre was new to the air station.

He is my boss.