Flying For Our Mates
Illawarra Mercury
Friday July 22, 2005
THEY still ache for lost mates, but the members of 817 Squadron are focused on their next mission: getting the Navy's Sea King helicopters back on deck.
The tight-knit chopper group was torn by tragedy in March when four of its airmen were among nine personnel killed in the Sea King disaster in Indonesia.A board of inquiry into the crash will start public hearings in late August, but the Sea Kings are back in the air after being cleared to fly last month.The skies above HMAS Albatross thrummed to their blades yesterday as Defence Minister Robert Hill flew with members of the squadron.Squadron Commander James Tobin, said his team remained deeply affected by the loss of their comrades."In some ways it's business as usual but obviously people are still upset by the accident, and some more than others," Commander Tobin said."Obviously when the accident happened everyone was deeply distressed, but we're back flying, and while people are still upset, (we are) moving ahead."Whilst people will always remember the accident and the people involved, they remember they're part of a team and our job is to get these aircraft going."Expressing full confidence in the ageing fleet of Sea Kings, Commander Tobin said the squadron's next mission was taking the helicopters back to sea."I wouldn't be going flying in them if I wasn't fully confident and everybody is - I have a group of very professional maintainers and aircrew," he said."We're going through a process of getting everybody back up to speed after having about 21/2 months off flying and we're well into that. "HMAS Success needs to operate with her aircraft and as soon as the aircraft is ready and the aircrew is back up to speed we'll get them to sea."Commander Tobin admitted the upcoming inquiry would be "difficult" for the squadron, but said it had coped with tough times in the past."You can see people in the hangar busy, we've got aircraft flying, we've just flown the minister - we're doing pretty well at the moment."When the accident happened we had two aircraft up at Darwin and another aircraft left on board HMAS Kanimbla."Now all those aircraft are back in the squadron we have had an opportunity to regroup - everybody is moving about quite well."
© 2005 Illawarra Mercury