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Spectators have rushed into the sea to help a pilot whose plane crashed into water during an airshow. The aircraft from a display team hit the water in front of thousands of people at the Herne Bay Airshow in Kent at around 3.30pm on Sunday. The plane flipped and came to rest upside down around 20m from the shore, leaving the pilot struggling to get out of the partially submerged cockpit. Photographer Nigel Hancock watched as around a dozen onlookers rushed into the water to help the pilot. He told Kent Online: "The display team was coming towards the end of its routine, and I saw a plane coming down low and slowly, beyond the parameters of its normal flight routines. "I thought he was in trouble, so I took a series of shots of what happened. It looked to be a textbook forced landing. "I saw about a dozen people going into the water which was very heroic, bearing in mind the pilot was underwater and struggling to get out. "If they hadn't flipped the plane over quickly it could have been a lot worse. Due to their quick actions the pilot was relatively unharmed."