Heroes dive in vain bid to save plane crash five
THREE brave friends dived into an estuary in a vain attempt to save the lives of five Britons who had crashed in a plane.
Kurt Bratby, 27, and his pals repeatedly dived as deep as they could through leaking fuel and debris to try to pull the victims out of the sinking plane.
Despite holding their breath under water for three minutes, they could not wrench open the seaplane’s door.
They then tried to tie ropes around the plane and pull it to shore with their dinghy – but without success.
Pictures taken at the scene show the heroes and another man getting a rope around the plane’s tail.
Mr Bratby and his friends were on a houseboat at Hawkesbury River, 25 miles north of Sydney city centre, in Australia, when the plane nose-dived into the water on New Year’s Eve.
Richard Cousins, the 58-year-old chief executive of FTSE 100 company Compass Group, died with his sons Will and Edward, aged 25 and 23, his fiancee Emma Bowden, 48, and her 11-year-old daughter Heather.
Canadian-born pilot Gareth Morgan, 44, also died in the tragedy.
Estate agent Mr Bratby, of Sydney, said he leapt into action with his friends when they saw the crash.
He said: “We were just loading up the houseboat when my friends called out.
“We got out to the scene in under a minute. We didn’t think about the dangers. Once the adrenaline kicked in we were just thinking about the people we could save.
“We jumped in, swam over to the plane and dived down to get to the door. We had no luck because of all the fuel. I saw one window but I couldn’t see inside.
“We just kept trying but it was too deep and we had to get out.
“After that we got a rope and tried to lasso it over the plane, with no success.”
Despite onlookers warning them about the risks from the fuel, the friends then tied the tail of the doomed plane to their dinghy and tried in vain to drag the aircraft to the shoreline.
Mr Bratby added: “In the end we tied a buoy to the end of the rope and waited for the rescuers to come. As every second went by, we were losing more and more hope.”
The plane sank 40ft to the bottom of the estuary, from where police divers recovered the bodies of the victims.
The Sydney Seaplanes flight had left Cottage Bay Inn, where the family enjoyed a meal before their return flight at 3pm to Rose Bay, near Sydney Harbour.
The plane had turned right before it hit the water 10 minutes later.
Air accident investigators are examining the wreckage of the De Havilland DHC-2 Beaver and are now looking into similar crashes involving the same model of seaplane, which had been manufactured in 1963.