All this week Energy Voice is taking a look back at the events of November 6th in which 45 men lost their lives after a Chinook helicopter crashed on its return to Sumburgh Airport from the Brent Delta platform.
The account of an eyewitness one year on from the Chinook helicopter disaster revealed he stood ‘transfixed’ as it descended into the water.
Energy Voice has uncovered from the archives, his eyewitness detail which shows the true extent of he saw.
His description came from a Fatal Accident Inquiry held a year after the accident.
A young workman stood transfixed as he watched the doomed British International Helciopters Chinook dive into the sea off Shetland.
Concrete finisher Mr Andrew Maxwell-Brahms at first thought he was watching a parachute falling.
“All the time it was falling very fast. I was transfixed – I didn’t know what it was. It was twisting from side to side,” he told the second day of the fatal accident inquiry into the deaths of 45 passengers and crew on board the aircraft.
Mr Maxwell-Brahms (23), a Thurso man now staying at Thistle Court, Virkie, Shetland, realised it was a helicopter when he saw a rotor blade shearing off.
As soon as that happened, the helicopter’s speed increased dramatically.
There was a large splash and the blades were still spinning, he said.
“The way it fell didn’t resemble a helicopter. I had not seen a helicopter in that position before,” said Mr Maxwell-Brahms, who had been working on top of Sumburgh Airport’s radio station at the time.
He estimated the Chinook was about one-and-a-half miles away, and flying at more than 400ft when he first saw it.
Under cross-examination, he confirmed that only one set of blades had become detached before the aircraft hit the water.
The crash happened on November 6, last year, when the Chinook was returning to Sumburgh Airport with a full complement of oilmen from platforms in Shell’s Brent Field.
Only two men – the pilot and a young passenger – survived the world’s worst civilian helicopter accident.
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