Capt. Ron Berman, the naval officer who survived a helicopter crash that took the lives of Israeli Air Force pilots Lt. Col. Erez Sachyani, 38, and Maj. Chen Fogel, 27, spoke for the first time about the fatal accident from his hospital bed at Haifa's Rambam Health Care Campus Tuesday.
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"The accident happened around 8:50 p.m. I managed to extricate myself from the sinking helicopter. After many attempts to extricate my friends, I was rescued by a naval patrol boat. I wish lots and lots of strength to the Fogel and Sachyani families."
"I love you. Be strong," he said.
Israeli Navy Commander Maj. Gen. David Saar Salama and IAF Commander Maj. Gen. Amikam Norkin visited Berman at the hospital and spoke with him and his relatives there on Tuesday. During their visit, Salama and Norkin expressed their appreciation for Berman's actions and lauded his composure during the incident.
"You did everything you could have done and everything that was possible. You conducted yourself responsibly," Salama told Berman.
Norkin also lauded Berman, telling him: "You acted courageously and calmly."
In a press briefing Tuesday, the head of the Israeli Air Force Air Division Brig. Gen. Amir Lazar commented on what led a military helicopter to crash into the sea off the coast of Haifa Monday night.
Lazar said the team had encountered a technical malfunction in the helicopter's left engine, where a fire erupted.
Lazar also described the moments when Berman reported the crash to his commanders and his attempts to save the two pilots.
At this stage, the direction of the investigation is that at some point upon returning for landing, the helicopter experienced a major technical malfunction, apparently of a fire in the left engine, which led the helicopter to make an emergency landing at sea," he explained.
"It may be that during the ignition of the motors, wires were burned that resulted in them not having electricity, and they, therefore, couldn't report their situation" to the control tower.
"Despite the malfunction, they succeeded in bringing the helicopter to a relatively safe cruise, and that is apparently what succeeded in allowing the naval officer to extricate himself," Lazar said. "After he was extricated, the officer attempted to get the pilots out but did not succeed. He made contact with the squadron commander through his personal phone and updated him on the crash."
Despite the publication of the initial findings of the investigation, the commander emphasized the circumstances of the pilots' deaths had yet to be ascertained.
"We are focusing on the technical analysis of the malfunction, and we still don't know what caused the pilots' deaths." He said that although the team successfully landed on the water, "it is still unclear why the pilots did not manage to escape."
Lazar further announced that IAF Commander Maj. Gen. Amikam Norkin had ordered training flights to resume with the exception of Eurocopter AS565 Panther helicopters, the model involved in Monday night's crash.
Sachyani, a 38-year-old father of three, and Fogel, 27, were laid to rest on Tuesday.
Thousands of people, including Diaspora Affairs Minister Nachman Shai, Norkin, and Salama, attended Fogel's funeral Tuesday.
Fogel leaves behind his parents, Yaron and Irit, two brothers, Matan and Shahar, and a girlfriend, Lilach, whom he had planned to marry.
"My son was in the air force not for the flight but for the values," Fogel's father, Yaron, said. "He didn't want to bear arms, he evaded it. That is why he channeled his path to serve in the navy's helicopters, so that he would not have to carry out attack operations. He came to be a pilot because of his values, his love of country and Zionism.
"We didn't think he would die in a helicopter, Of course there were fears, but we were more afraid of the trips he would take every day to Rehovot, from road accidents.
Fogel continued: "Yesterday, we went through an ongoing nightmare until we got word. I don't blame anyone, but we saw the reports and we couldn't get a hold of anyone, and then no one agreed to talk to us until the deliverers of the bad news arrived."
Asked what he would like people to remember of him, Yaron said, "His smile, his values, a person who was good, who aspired to help his fellow man, who was always thinking about the planet, about people and animals. A standup guy."
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