'It was crazy': Navy helicopter crashes off coast, injuring nine

A Navy helicopter has crashed off Jervis Bay, about 150 kilometres south of Sydney, after what a witness described as an explosion close to the rotors.

ACT Police and rescue helicopters have been serving to the Defence Force reply to the incident about 9.10pm on Wednesday.

Paramedics mentioned 9 folks escaped the plane with very minor accidents.

“It’s just crashed,” one bystander will be heard saying in video taken on the scene, which is close to the HMAS Creswell coaching base.

Michael, who’s seen loads of navy operations over 20 years with a house within the space, was fishing with pals on Iluka Beach when the chopper went down.

“This one operation, it was like, it was crazy,” he instructed 9News.

“They had a couple of boats out there and then they had two choppers and one was going low and high and low and then like at one point, one of the helicopters, you could hear the rotors were slowing right down.

“And then they revved up, after which there’s this large explosion on the highest of the rotors after which it simply went bang, ditched within the water.”

Despite the drama, Michael said the helicopter was only 10 or 20 metres above the water and the crash looked “very managed”.

“And then impulsively every little thing identical to, all hell broke unfastened and so they had choppers flying in, that they had two or three different choppers flying in,” he said.

A Navy helicopter crashed off Jervis Bay, south of Sydney, on Wednesday, March 22, 2023. (9News)

“They had boats coming in and so they had this actually large Navy ship coming in so that they have been actually fast to the scene and every little thing however yeah, loopy. It was so surreal.”

The wreck was quickly towed from Iluka Beach across to Greenpatch, the fisher said.

It’s unclear what caused the crash.