Griffin helicopter crash lands in a field near Shrewsbury carrying 8 people and also knocking a tree and killing some poor passer-by in a rather embarrassing fashion.
Why a griffin? because its bigger and we can kill more people! Those were the words of RAF Shawbury’s press officer as we drove out of Shrewsbury towards a field which was being used as the site of a simulated helicopter crash designed as a training excercise involving all emergency services, and the RAF’s own emergency response crews.
From my point of view it was an enjoyable day out taking the sort of pictures you are not normally able to get, especially as during these sort of incidents you are generally kept on a fairly tight leash.
The RAF crews were first on the scene, this would not normally be the case, but in this excercise each service would have their responses assessed separately and in this case the RAF crews were chosen to be the first responders and therefore be assessed first.
On arrival crews found the crashed helicopter was actually a car with bits of helicopter attached and strewn around (debris from an actual crash). Crews soon got to work assessing the condition of the casualties, and I started getting in and picking up some close up shots which would be difficult to obtain normally.
As the event moved on my focus shifted from the close up action shots to trying to get some images which represented the emotion of the day, I also switched lenses for many of the images from a wide lens to a much longer one to isolate parts of the scene, these images were possible because I had less time pressure to worry about (not having to send regular updates helped a lot here).
For more pictures like this have a look here
