Let us all observe a moment of silence for the Sandpiper Air flight that went down off of Cape Cod nearly 25 years ago… but don’t worry about observing too long, because it was a fictional event on the NBC comedy Wings. And the only real victim, star Tim Daly tells us, was a rather sensitive part of his anatomy.

In a Season 3 finale cliffhanger, a plane piloted by Sandpiper Air owners/brothers Joe and Brian Hackett, along with a handful of their co-workers, plunged into the Atlantic while on route to Boston. Daly, now on CBS’ Madam Secretary, recalls shooting the Season 4 premiere — which found everyone alive but floating in a life raft while waiting for help following the plane’s unexpected water landing — outdoors in a giant tank on the Paramount Lot in Hollywood.

“We were in the tank, in the water, late at night. There was no live audience. There was a life raft, and for some reason, I was over the side of the life raft in the water,” he recalls.

Doesn’t sound too bad, right? Well, “you know, Los Angeles is a desert,” Daly points out. “It gets cold at night, and this water was freezing cold.”

So if you ever watch (or rewatch) the episode, know that Daly was just about as miserable as Joe looks throughout — especially because a bit of ad-libbing never made it to air. “I said one of the funniest things I’ve ever said on Wings. I was so hoping it would make it into the show,” he says, laughing. “Somebody said, ‘How you doing?’ I said, ‘My nipples feel like the snaps on a Western shirt.'”

Annnnnd scene.

See Daly in icy action in the video below, then hit the comments with your condolences for his frozen anatomy.