Members of Lt. Lance Leone’s legal team survey the scene of the crash. They’re looking out at James Island, and standing underneath the location of the power lines that caused the crash. (Photo provided by Leone)

When Coast Guard helicopter 6017 crashed in 2010 on its way to Sitka, co-pilot Lt. Lance Leone was the only member of the four-person crew to survive.

Lt. Sean Krueger, Petty Officer 2nd Class Brett Banks and Petty Officer 1st Class Adam Hoke, died in the crash.

This week we’ve been bringing you a three part interview with Leone.

Part 1: ‘We hit something we never saw’
Part 2: ‘A rapid, liquid stop’

This third and final part begins in a Seattle hospital, where Leone was recovering from a broken collarbone and other injuries in the days after the crash.

Listen to iFriendly audio.

Leone was recorded at the studios of Texas Public Radio in San Antonio. This interview was conducted Nov. 12.

Interview transcript – Part Three

LEONE: They told me no one else survived and from that moment on I had to ask continuously: “Why, why, why?” It was immensely troubling. And as I’ve talked to soldiers who have been coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan about this same issue, it affects them as well when their platoon, when their group is hurt, and they say “Why not me? Why didn’t it happen to me?” I don’t know the right answer to how you heal the brain, but it’s definitely slower than the physical side.

KCAW: Was the memorial service a helpful experience for you?

LEONE: It was exhausting for me, mentally and physically. My arms still barely worked but everyone from the town and everyone at the Air Station and everyone that had come to the memorial service was hugging me and I couldn’t be limp and not hug back. So I was hugging as many people as would hug me. I would hug back. I was exhausted. Mentally, I think I was more of a robot. I didn’t know how much I was supposed to cry. I didn’t know if I was supposed to cry. Not crying would be seen as I was too stern. It was very difficult mentally, because obviously all I wanted to do was curl up into a ball and cry and cry that Sean, specifically, wasn’t there anymore. I’d known him since 1999. I’d known him since I’d shown up at the Academy. I’d known him most of my adult life. And to have him be the one I was flying with, that didn’t come up to the surface was very trying. The amount that I’d known about Adam and Brett, just having met them, about their families and about their struggles and their hardships and the things that they love – I had to be there to memorialize them. It was very hard. It was hard, but it needed to happen.

KCAW: Do you keep in touch with any of the families today?

LEONE: Absolutely. I attempt to talk to them as often as I can without being bothersome. More than anything it’s, for me, I feel like I want to know how their life is going. How are the children – the seven children that are left behind, how are they doing, is there anything I can do to help?

KCAW: When you found out there were charges, how did you find out?

LEONE: It was a slow process. I was six days from starting flying again in Mobile, Alabama. I was in Washington, D.C. My wife, Ellen, had loaded up our two children at the time, packed everything up and was going to fly down to Pensacola to stay with friends, and Mobile to stay with friends, while I went through the requalification course. We had plans. We had plane tickets. And then I was told while I was in D.C. that I couldn’t attend the training.

KCAW: How were you ultimately informed of the charges? Did you get called into an office?

LEONE: I was sitting there and I got a phone call from now-Capt. (Doug) Cameron, and I said “Sir, I’m at the health fair, can I wait until noon?” and he said, “No, come back right now.”

Cameron, the Air Station’s commanding officer, informed Leone of the charges: Destruction of government property for the loss of the helicopter. Neglecting his duties as navigator, by not avoiding the wires. And the military equivalent of negligent homicide for the deaths of the two crewmen aboard – Hoke and Banks.

LEONE: I had formally been read those exact same charges during the (administrative) investigation, but promised they were just normal. We have to always read you your rights before doing an investigation. So I’d seen those charges before. I’d seen the negligent homicide. I’d seen the dereliction of duty. But to see it actually charged against me, all I could do is sit with my lower jaw gasping.

KCAW: This is in then-Cmdr. Cameron’s office?

LEONE: Correct. And I asked him “What’s next, what do we do next?” And he said, “Well, because of the severity of the charges, you’ll be taken to an Article 32,” and he was extremely professional.

An Article 32 hearing is similar to a grand jury proceeding in civilian court. A military evaluator hears evidence and decides whether there’s merit to proceed to a court martial. Leone’s hearing took place in Juneau in December. The Coast Guard said the helicopter was going too fast and that Leone fell short of his duties as navigator. Leone’s attorneys argued the Coast Guard should’ve already removed the wires the chopper hit, because they’d been implicated in two other accidents. As the arguments went back and forth, Leone sat inside the courtroom and listened. But outside the courtroom, he tried not to think about it.

LEONE: My family’s unbelievable. My wife, my dad, my mom, stepmother, all my family. And then the Sitka family that came over on the ferry with me. How did I occupy my time without the trial? Not talking about the trial. … The first day of testimony was so incredibly trying on my soul, being told of everything I did wrong.

PDF: The Final Action Memorandum (click to read)

The Coast Guard dropped all charges against Leone, but issued what’s called a “Final Action Memorandum” on the accident. It said Leone directly contributed to the deaths of those on board. And it said he should have been more vocal in challenging Krueger, the pilot in command, when he made a low pass over a Coast Guard boat below.

In a memo of his own, Leone says the black box voice recordings from the accident don’t tell the whole story, and that he challenged Kruger using a method taught to him by the Coast Guard. He calls it “floating a trial balloon.”

PDF: Lt. Lance Leone memo on promotion (click to read)

LEONE: You say things like “We might not have much radio communications this low,” or “There sure are a lot of bald eagles or birds down this low.” You say stuff like that so they pick up on your discomfort, but you allow them to then make a decision without you having to challenge their authority for the sole purpose of saying that you’re uncomfortable.

Truth be told, when I first showed up in Sitka, I was very uncomfortable because it was different. I’d never flown below terrain. That’s something that I believe anyone that shows up in Alaska that flies below mountain ridges, when you can’t even see the top of the mountain – it’s very different than any flying I’d done before. I used this the whole time I’d been at Sitka for those first couple weeks to gently say I was uncomfortable without being the outcast of “Oh, this guy’s never going to be able to be an aircraft commander. He’s afraid when we even fly through Whale Bay/Gut Bay.” Instead of being afraid, or being concerned openly, I say “Wow, how would we turn around if we had a problem here?” It’s floating a trial balloon that would get across the point that I’m uncomfortable, but I don’t want to challenge the authority of the aircraft commander.

KCAW: Kind of like “Boy, we’re going really fast,” when you’re in a car.

LEONE: Yeah, or like, “I hope there’s not any cops around.” Yes. “Boy we’re going pretty fast. Wow, I didn’t know the car could go this fast,” instead of saying “Slow down you incompetent driver! I’m going to drive!” That’s the spectrum “clear, bold and concise” can take, you know?

With the Coast Guard’s report came an admonishment from Rear Admiral Thomas Ostebo, the Coast Guard’s commander in Alaska. Leone was transferred to a desk job in San Antonio, Texas. He’s now a Coast Guard liaison to Tricare, the military’s health insurance arm.

And he’s awaiting word about promotion. His lawyer, John Smith, says the promotion is facing extra, unnecessary scrutiny. A Coast Guard board met this month and made a recommendation. That stays secret and heads to Adm. Robert Papp, the Coast Guard’s commandant, in Washington, D.C.

LEONE: They will decide the fate of my Coast Guard career. The fate of me flying again. After the second AEB met and said I could fly again, I didn’t really think there was a way to not fly again. But then I started realizing that if I didn’t make lieutenant commander, I would see out the rest of my time in the Coast Guard here in San Antonio.

If Admiral Papp allows the promotion to move ahead, Leone will become a lieutenant commander and receive back pay to August 1, the date the promotion was scheduled to take effect. If Papp takes Leone off the promotion list, the matter moves to the desk of Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano.

KCAW: How has everything that’s happened, from July 7, up until this current situation, how has this shaped the way you feel about the Coast Guard?

LEONE: The Coast Guard is a great organization. It has developed me from when I was 17 to where I currently am. This has really shown me, and developed me, I think more if I’d had nothing to me. It has developed my character, it has developed my knowledge of truth, it has developed how I deal with people, and it has really humbled me to how little I really control a lot of things in my life. But it’s not changed my opinion of the Coast Guard. It’s a wonderful organization filled with the best that America has to offer.

KCAW: I think people hear that and think, “How can he still like the Coast Guard after all of this?”

LEONE: The amazing part is that it’s not the entire Coast Guard. I have gotten so much more support than any of the negative stuff. It’s a question that’s hard for me to answer. I will continue pressing for what I believe is right, and I will not compromise my honor, respect or devotion to duty, like I’ve been taught. I will do what I believe is right for the Coast Guard, and I believe what’s right is to go through this and see the process to finality.

A decision on his promotion to lieutenant commander is not expected until January.

FILE: A Coast Guard 25-foot response boat crew from Station Quillayute River, Wash., along with local emergency response personnel search the water near James Island, Wash., for crew members and wreckage from a Coast Guard MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter, which crashed July 7, 2010. (Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer Nathan Litteljohn.)

This is the second of our three-part conversation with Lt. Lance Leone, the only survivor of a fatal helicopter crash in 2010, in which three people from Coast Guard Air Station Sitka died.

Lt. Lance Leone, in Sitka

Leone was the co-pilot aboard Coast Guard helicopter 6017 as it flew back to Sitka from Astoria, Ore.

In Part One, Leone talked about the mission and the events leading up to the flight, as well as his experience in the cockpit with Lt. Sean Krueger, the pilot in command and a longtime friend. On their way north, they saw a small Coast Guard boat leaving a station in Washington. Krueger decided to fly low over the boat.

“And he started a righthand turn down in a decreasing altitude along the coastline,” Leone said. “At this point in the flight recorder it gets very interesting. I say ‘Well, that’s Quillayute.’ And I say it wrong. … But I said it, and on the third time of saying it, moments later, we hit something we never saw.”

Electrical wires, stretching nearly 2,000 feet between the mainland and nearby James Island. The impact caught the chopper’s right main landing gear. Its four main rotor blades broke off, and the fuselage was torn into five pieces, coming to rest in shallow water about 150 yards northeast of the island.

That’s where Part Two begins:

Part 2 – iFriendly audio

Other parts of the interview
Part One: ‘We hit something we never saw’
Part Three: ‘Come back right now’

Interview transcript – Part Two

LEONE: I was in the left seat. My shoulders and my knees and my head were all banging around in the cabin for I don’t know how long. It felt very slow motion, but then there was a rapid stop, and that rapid stop quickly became a rapid liquid stop. And I was underwater, upside-down, in a helicopter.

KCAW: It happened that fast.

LEONE: It was that fast. We were flying, everything was fine, and then it blew apart. When I was underwater I didn’t know anything. It felt like the world was shaking apart.

KCAW: What did it sound like?

LEONE: Screeching? Screeching and cracking. I had double hearing protection, but it was kind of like a pounding and a screeching. I got to listen to it on the voice recorder and it is literally screeching and crashing. I don’t know how to link it to … what anyone else would hear. I guess, like a car accident?

KCAW: Was that difficult, listening to those recordings?

LEONE: I had the opportunity to read the recordings months in advance. Actually this time last year was the first time I had the ability to read through the recording and to go through and see what I had done right. I’d read the investigation and seen everything I’d done wrong, and that the crew had done wrong, because that’s what they’d focused on. But to see what I’d done right and everything I did to the best of my ability, but then to listen to it and hear the sounds, it was … I would say “troubling,” but I was ready for it, based upon my desire. I didn’t have to. My lawyers could’ve just listened to it with me outside the room, but I wanted to make sure the nonverbal made it into there.

CLICK TO ENLARGE. CG 6017 left Astoria, Ore., at 8:48 a.m. PDT on July 7, 2010. At 9:41 a.m., it crashed near La Push, Wash.

Leone is referring to nonverbal communications going on in the cockpit. He wanted to make sure they were part of the investigation record, which would later be summed up in what’s called a FAM, or Final Action Memorandum.

KCAW: The Final Action Memo says there were six minutes between impact and the time you fired off a flare. What was going on in those six minutes?

LEONE: So, after the abusive vibrations and then it stopping underwater, I did what every aviator would do out there. We train on it all the time. Yearly, we’re flipped over in a chair and go through the procedures. I did the procedures the Coast Guard taught me. I retracted my collective, found my exit, pushed the exit out of the way. Undid my cords, released my harness and pulled through the hole to get out. This is where it changed a little bit from what I’d done before. I was kicking to get out and I wasn’t getting to the surface.

I hadn’t put my regulator in to breath underwater yet. I just assumed I’d be able to get out quicker than be able to have to put that in. Normally when we do it, it’s a slow flip in a chair. This was an unbelievably fast hitting the water. I can’t quote on how many Gs but I know there was a lot of impact having been flying through the air at 125 knots, and hitting the wires at approximately 115 feet. At that point, we were a projectile.

Leone used an emergency air supply helicopter crews carry. It’s called a HEEDS bottle, which stands for Helicopter Emergency Egress Device. It carries about 1.5 cubic feet of compressed air. How long that lasts depends on how you breathe. In training, Leone could usually get between 7 and 13 good breaths out of it. But after the crash, as he tried to find his way out of the underwater wreckage, he only managed six breaths.

LEONE: Coming to the surface, my eyes were burning because when the 6017 crashed, we were pretty much max-fueled with JP8 jet fuel, which is very similar to kerosene. So when I came up on the surface, I was covered in kerosene. I still had my helmet on, and I started looking for anything to float on, because I couldn’t kick hard enough to keep my head and my body out of the water enough to be comfortable.

Leone broke his collarbone in the accident, and as he tried to inflate his life vest, he discovered his arms weren’t working.

LEONE: It was the first time I’d ever asked my body to do something and my body said “No.” But my wrists worked, and so I cranked my wrist against the base of the regulator, which was sitting right to my left, and for some reason, it worked, with just that little bit of wrist motion.

The vest inflated, but there were still problems. Leone’s dry suit was torn and filling with water, and although he says he wasn’t in pain, there were injuries.

LEONE: I had a piece of helicopter that had lodged itself in my left forearm. My right hand was fairly mutilated because of pounding against something in the helicopter. My right shin was opened to the bone. The bone looked like a corncob that had been eaten – like the white, remaining husk of corn. My ankle was badly swollen. But the only real injury was a broken collarbone and a dislocated shoulder, which are both seatbelt injuries from the seatbelt that saved my life.

Now floating in the water between James Island and La Push, Washington, Leone began to look for his crewmates.

LEONE: I’d assumed based on every survival class I’d taken that everybody else would be there. I’ve not taken classes where you’re the only one left to survive. You’re always part of a team. And I couldn’t find Sean, Brett and Adam. I didn’t know where they were. It was very disheartening, but I knew I had to stay afloat if I could ever figure out where they were.

Leone looked for his emergency beacon, but with his arms disabled, he couldn’t get to it. Next, he reached for a signaling mirror to try and reflect sunlight and catch someone’s attention. As he opened that pocket, out popped a pencil-sized flare. He managed to assemble it using only his fingertips. By the time he fired it into the air, a skiff from the La Push harbormaster’s office was already heading in his direction.

LEONE: As they approached me, they said “We’re going to grab you, we’ve got other people looking for the other three.” I, at that moment, had the wherewithal to tell them, “I don’t want you to pull on my arms,” because I didn’t feel like they were attached. In my head, I kind of envisioned them being disconnected from my body, although my fingers worked. Because I couldn’t use the rest of them, I just pictured they were either just flopping around with nerves just connected, but with bones not… so they, with all the training that they’ve had, pulling fishing nets aboard that boat, they scooped me out of the water by dropping the gunnels of the vessel below my back and sliding me into the back of that johnboat – I call it a johnboat, but it’s just an aluminum craft, maybe 14 feet, maybe longer. But those were the heroes of the day for me.”

Leone was taken to a nearby hospital and then medevacked to Seattle for further recovery. His parents from Maine and Florida, and his family in Sitka met him there within 12 hours.

LEONE: Ellen, my unbelievably great wife, loaded up the children, got an Alaska Airlines flight the Coast Guard booked for her, and she landed in Seattle. The pilots came on the intercom and had everyone sit down so she and the children could get off. The Coast Guard brought her directly to the hospital to see me.

Less than a week after the crash, hundreds of Sitkans, as well as high ranking Coast Guard officers and elected officials gathered at Air Station Sitka for a memorial service in honor of Krueger, Banks and Hoke. Leone was there, too.

LEONE: I had wanted to attend a memorial service in La Push, but my doctors wouldn’t let me go, because they were afraid of blood clotting.

KCAW: Were you medically ready to leave the hospital when the memorial service happened, or was that a little faster than – it just seems fast to me, I guess.

LEONE: I didn’t like being in a hospital. I don’t like being a patient. I like helping people, I don’t like being helped. I don’t know what it is about my personality. The day after the accident I asked when I could stand up and they said “Just wait one more day.” So on Day 3, I stood up, walked around, did the stairs, and on that day I started the long process of physical therapy. It was quick. Similar injuries to a car accident. Obviously physical wounds were very quick to heal. Now, the mental stuff took a lot longer.

Read and listen to Part Three.

U.S. Coast Guard Lt. Lance Leone holds one of the warning balls on the power lines his helicopter hit on July 7, 2010. According to a Coast Guard memo after the crash, these warning balls are half as big as the ones normally used, were faded and required replacement, and according to earlier photos, were positioned over land, leaving a large portion of the lines unmarked. The memo also states FAA regulations don’t require power lines as low as the ones in the accident to be marked. (Photo provided by Leone)

This is the first of a three-part interview with Lt. Lance Leone, the sole survivor of a 2010 Coast Guard helicopter crash, in which three people from Air Station Sitka died.

The MH-60 Jayhawk, known by its tail number, 6017, had been upgraded in Elizabeth City, N.C.

An aircrew of four left Air Station Sitka to pick up the new chopper in Astoria, Ore., and fly it back to Alaska.

On July 7, 2010, during the first leg of that return flight, the helicopter struck wires near La Push, Wash., and crashed into the sea.

Lt. Sean Krueger, who was the pilot in command, along with Petty Officer 1st Class Adam Hoke and Petty Officer 2nd Class Brett Banks, were killed.

Leone, the co-pilot, faced criminal charges in the aftermath of the crash. Those charges were dismissed, but he was admonished by District headquarters and later transferred to a desk job in San Antonio, Texas.

He spoke to KCAW last week. It is the first time he’s talked on the record to a news organization, and we’re going to bring you the interview in three parts. Here, we begin just before the crash, which happened shortly after Leone transferred to Air Station Sitka.

Listen to iFriendly audio.

Leone was recorded Nov. 12 at the studios of Texas Public Radio in San Antonio. His attorney, John Smith, listened in on the conversation from his office near Washington, D.C., but did not prevent his client from answering any of our questions.

In the next part, Leone describes the accident, and how it changed his life and his career forever. And in the third part, Leone talks about the charges he faced after the crash and his future in the Coast Guard.

Other parts of the interview:
Part Two – ‘A rapid, liquid stop’
Part Three – ‘Come back right now’

Interview transcript – Part One

LEONE: I literally had just gotten there. I was still living in a bed and breakfast in the community because my household goods had not arrived yet. So, all of our couches, all of our stuff had not arrived yet from Elizabeth City, because it was taking a barge around the whole world. I don’t know where it went exactly.

KCAW: It felt like the whole world.

LEONE: It felt like that.

KCAW: If we can begin with when you first get to Astoria: Was it the morning of? Or the night before?

LEONE: We were assigned to fly down to Astoria in the Juliet model. 6017 was flying from Elizabeth City, which was an aircraft I’d flown before quite a bit. It was flying across the country and we were flying down from Sitka. We were going to rendezvous in Astoria, exchange paperwork on the two different aircraft, and then the pilots were going to shake hands, swap aircraft, and we were going to fly back to Sitka, and the other aircraft was going to fly back to Elizabeth City. It’s an often done thing in the Coast Guard. Our large depot maintenance is all done in Elizabeth City, so we have to switch our aircraft out.

KCAW: What does it feel like to pick up a new chopper? Is it like driving a car off a lot, or…

LEONE: So, it’s interesting … 6017, I had actually flown it the whole time I was in Elizabeth City. I’d done most of the test flights on it when it came out of the depot maintenance. I’d flown it. When we say it’s brand new, it was refurbished. We’d bought these (MH-)60s in 1991 through 1993 – that timeframe – and they’re the same aircraft. They look absolutely gorgeous always, because we have some of the best maintainers in the world. They’re not brand new, but they are totally, beautifully refurbished. The 6017 had sat in Elizabeth City and I’d flown it on cases in Elizabeth City. It was great to go from the J model to the T model. It was like a new aircraft even though they’ve just been kind of polished and re-done from the inside, like they do with most aircraft that you fly on in the commercial world. They just replace all the parts.

Leone says he was selected for the mission two days beforehand. He and Lt. Sean Krueger, the chopper’s pilot, had met at the Coast Guard Academy in Connecticut. And although Leone had known Krueger for most of his adult life, this would be one of their first times flying together.

As co-pilot, Leone’s responsibility was inside the cockpit – to monitor equipment and navigate the helicopter along a safe course.

LEONE: The morning of the mishap, we all woke up, we had breakfast at a hotel in Astoria. Everyone was very happy to have had the opportunity to go to Astoria. It was one of the warmest couple days on record down there. Leaving Sitka, heading down to Astoria where it was beautiful, taking the opportunity to do lots of shopping at Costco. We were all very motivated to get back home.

We’d spent three days talking about, on the way down, what we were going to do on the way back up. How the weather, what the winds were going to be affecting. We did a lot of talking around the dinner table and the breakfast table that morning about some of the different things we were going to have to experience.

The morning was fairly hurried, because we knew we had a long way to go. Nine-hundred miles with a possible 20-knot headwind depending what altitude we were at was going to make it a very long day, so we knew we had to get on the road. We got all the checklists completed, a lot of busy-ness on the ground.

We took off, climbed to 800 feet, and upon reaching 800 feet, we realized we’d had a headwind that was predicted. We came right back down again to a lower altitude. It was more of an off-shore or on-shore breeze, because there are cliffs all along that shoreway there. And flying up, it was just an absolutely gorgeous day.

The Jayhawk had been upgraded with a new avionics system – those are the electronics that control the helicopter. It included a new autopilot system. Leone refers to it as a “coupler.”

LEONE: When you cross through into Canadian airspace, you have to tell them exactly what time and what location you’ll be crossing into that airspace. So I set that track, I told them how far away it was, and I engaged our auto pilot, which couples up the flight controls with the path I’d set. The path was an offshore path that hit a point on the Canadian airspace, which we would then tell them we were going to fly through there.

KCAW: So Canadian authorities know exactly where you’re going to be, and that that’s you.

LEONE: That’s correct. And we were making jokes about it. I don’t think Canadians ever shot down an American plane headed north. It’s way more important going into American airspace, but you give them the same courtesy that they give us.

Krueger was an experienced pilot whose career included a three-year exchange program with the British Royal Navy. But Leone had more experience with the helicopter’s new systems, especially the autopilot.

LEONE: I was very excited to show him how you can engage it. It will fly itself. As long as you keep it away from obstacles, and have the right altitude, it will fly you safely to wherever you tell it to fly you.

By this time, Coast Guard helicopter 6017 was nearing La Push, Wash.

The small town on the Olympic Peninsula is home to the Quileute Tribe, as well as a small Coast Guard boat station.

LEONE: We both saw something up ahead. It was a Coast Guard cutter leaving port – actually, a Coast Guard small boat, a 47-footer, leaving (Station) Quillayute (River).

The helicopter was flying at 220 feet when Krueger began moving it closer to the boat.

Leone says it’s a maneuver pilots often perform at sea when checking on fishing boats or spotting a Coast Guard vessel. The Coast Guard’s report on the accident acknowledges that performing the maneuver is not isolated to this incident, but says vessels should not be “zoomed” except in an emergency or during rescue operations.

Leone describes the next 42 seconds, when helicopter 6017 slowed to 115 knots, descended to 114 feet, and passed over the boat.

LEONE: At this time, (Krueger) said “coupler disengaged” and he started a righthand turn down in a decreasing altitude along the coastline. At this point in the flight recorder it gets very interesting. I say “Well, that’s Quillayute.” And I say it wrong. I can’t read it. It’s a very difficult word. It’s like many Tlingit terms that are very hard for us to read in our language. But I said it, and on the third time of saying it, moments later, we hit something we never saw. And … I was … at that moment, everything changed.

 Read and listen to Part Two.