![]() At that time, the airport closed at 5pm Monday to Friday, as did its control tower. When all this had been done, the aircraft was washed down, refuelled, and towed into the hanger at Waterford Airport. ![]() ![]() Áine Phelan with John and Denise Kelly from the Order of Malta at the memorial sculpture. The memorial sculpture dedicated to the four Air Corps members killed in the crash. After that, Rescue 111 carried out various training exercises during the afternoon, including one out over the sea, and a reconnaissance of the landing facilities at Waterford Regional Hospital. The helicopter took off at 12.41pm for a 35-minute publicity flight for RTÉ. RTÉ cameras were on site in Waterford to film footage for broadcast on the news that evening. There was a crew of seven: Dave O’Flaherty, the pilot Mick Baker, co-pilot Pat Mooney, winch operator Niall Byrne, winchman and a three-man technical crew.įor the crew, there was the buzz of being the first people to participate in the first day of a new service. Their new Dauphin DH248 helicopter, known as Rescue 111, left Baldonnel at 10.24am that day and arrived at Waterford Airport at 11.02am. Prior to this, the Air Corps cover in the southwest region had operated only in daylight hours a service that had begun the previous year. It was the inaugural day of 24-hour service in the southeast coast region, based at Waterford Airport and provided by the Air Corps. ![]() Thursday, July 1st, 1999, was a landmark day for the Irish Search and Rescue services. O’Flaherty was 30 Baker 28 Mooney 34 Byrne 25. There is a simple wooden cross at the site, a metal plate attached with this engraving on it: “Erected in memory of the crew of Rescue 111 who died on this spot returning from a rescue mission 2 July 1999. The memorial, now deep and secluded in a hollow of high dunes, is not visible from the beach, and involves some steep scrambling to access. Without Mulligan’s local knowledge, I would not have found the site by myself. The crew of the Rescue 111 helicopter, from left, Sergeant Paddy Mooney, Corporal Niall Byrne, Captain Michael Baker and Captain Dave O’Flaherty. “I bring a Tricolour with me to plant there, because the four of them were in the Defence Forces and they died in service for the Irish people.” “I always visit the crash site once a year,” he says. They had trained together in the Curragh Mulligan was a pall-bearer at Baker’s funeral.Īs we walk, he holds a small rolled-up flag tight in one hand. I am walking out to the dunes with Eddie Mulligan, who was in the Irish Navy in 1999, and was a close friend of Mick Baker, the co-pilot of Rescue 111. The four men aboard, who had been engaged on a search-and-rescue mission at sea, all died instantly on impact. On that exceptionally foggy night, an Air Corps helicopter known as Rescue 111 came flying in over the beach, made unexpected impact with the edge of an unseen dune, and tumbled catastrophically out of the air. These beautiful dunes at Tramore beach, loosely knitted together by spiky grasses, are different now from what they looked like in the early hours of Friday, July 2nd, 1999. Sea dunes move and shift over time, sculpted both by wind and erosion. It is a bright, chilly winter morning, and I am walking on the beach between the dunes that lie beyond Tramore’s promenade and the town’s wide, shallow bay.
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