The mighty egg saves crew again.
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Angel from above - Local News - News - General - The Canberra Times
LOOKING at the photos it's hard to believe anybody left this helicopter wreck alive.
But Major Lukas Wild and Lieutenant-Colonel Matt Grills did and this week the Canberrans got the chance to thanks one of their rescuers, Michael Natale.
The two officers skirted death when they walked away from a violent helicopter crash soaked in aircraft fuel a fortnight ago.
An investigation into the crash is continuing as photographs supplied by the pilots and published for the first time today show the aircraft was torn to pieces on impact.
A four-wheel-drive has dragged the wreck out of the mountains but the chopper is unsalvageable.
Major Lukas Wild, a father of three, and Lieutenant-Colonel Matt Grills, a father of four, crash-landed near MtCoree, between the Brindabella Ranges and Wee Jasper.
The army officers treated each other's injuries and trekked 4.5km from the crash site to where the Snowy Hydro Southcare helicopter rescued them within 90 minutes of an emergency beacon being set off.
Major Wild said he never wanted to go through it again.
''We were very, very lucky,'' the 36-year-old said.
''I was surprised how quickly the rescue chopper came. If it didn't come for us we would have had to take our chances walking out.''
He considered himself lucky he crawled out of the wreckage in rugged terrain near the Brindabella Ranges and not Afghanistan or Iraq.
Major Wild has flown choppers during two tours of the Middle East for the Australian Army and now awaits knee surgery because of the only chopper crash he has been involved in.
Both men had cuts and bruises after the crash and considered themselves relatively unharmed.
The men have desk jobs in the Army and were clocking up their flying time on the morning of June 3. They said they were about to land the privately-owned Hughes 500 chopper but could not pull it out of a right-hand turn.
The chopper ''broke up'' after it spiralled downward and struck a log on the ground. The helicopter cabin and the men inside were flung sideways into a creek bed.
The tail boom and tail rotor snapped off and came to rest 30m away.
The main rotor disintegrated and was strewn throughout the crash site after it thrashed the ground.
Southcare Rescue helicopter spokeswoman Kate van Haalen said the fast rescue was a testament to the organisation, which had now flown more than 4200 missions. PHILLIP THOMSON
lucky boys..
