The picture painted of Capt. Chesley B. Sullenberger III has been one of steely calm in the moments before he guided US Airways Flight 1549 into the Hudson River, but inside, he was terrified, he said in his first in-depth interview since the Jan. 15 crash landing.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” Captain Sullenberger thought, he told Katie Couric on Sunday night’s broadcast of “60 Minutes” on CBS. “This doesn’t happen to me.” Asked to explain, he said, “I had this expectation that my career would be one in which I didn’t crash an airplane.”

He said he knew the plane was in trouble when he heard birds hit the engines.

“Loud thumps. It felt like the airplane being pelted by heavy rain or hail,” he said. “Losing thrust on both engines, at a low speed, at a low altitude, over one of the most densely populated areas on the planet. Yes, I knew it was a very challenging situation.”

He quickly ruled out turning back to La Guardia Airport or trying to make it to an airport in New Jersey, and turned instead toward the Hudson. He said he was concentrating so intensely that he did not say a prayer: “I would imagine somebody in back was taking care of that for me while I was flying the airplane.”