On August 12, 1985, one of the largest plane crashes in the history of world aviation occurred in Japan, killing 520 people.
Short distance flight
Statistics convincingly assert that air travel is the safest form of transport. Indeed, great attention is paid to the issues of passenger safety in civil aviation.
And, nevertheless, all these efforts cannot give one hundred percent guarantee. Sometimes a series of minor flaws, miscalculations, human errors leads to a catastrophic development of events. This happened on August 12, 1985, when one of the most terrible tragedies in the history of world aviation occurred.
Haneda Airport in Tokyo was especially busy that day. On the eve of the Bon holiday, which is customary in Japan to be celebrated with the family, thousands of people working in the capital went to meet with their loved ones.
At 18:00 local time, a Japan Airlines Boeing 747SR-46 was preparing to fly from Tokyo to Osaka. The flight was classified as “SR” - “short distance” - and was supposed to last only 54 minutes. Especially for flights of the "SR" category in Japan, the Boeing corporation built a modification of the "747" model, which allowed carrying up to 550 passengers on board.
Flight JAL 123 took off on August 12 with 15 crew members and 509 passengers on board. The aircraft commander was 49-year-old Masami Takahama, an experienced pilot who had worked for the airline for 19 years, 10 of which as the commander of a Boeing 747. The co-pilot was 39-year-old Yutaka Sasaki, who had 10 years of experience, of which 6 years as the second pilot of the Boeing 747.
Promotional video:
Signal "7700"
At 18:12, the plane took off from Haneda Airport. At 18:24, the liner reached the prescribed level of 7200 meters, and one of the flight attendants asked the commander if she could start serving passengers. At the moment when she received an affirmative answer, a loud sound, like an explosion, was heard in the cabin. The cockpit filled with white smoke.
An alarm was triggered in the pilot's cabin, announcing a sudden drop in pressure inside the fuselage.
JAL 123 Japan Airlines flight. Frame youtube.com
The crew tried to determine what happened. Masami Takahama suggested that the landing gear doors were torn off. The flight engineer reported that the hydraulic system is faulty. The commander of the ship decided to turn the plane back to Tokyo. However, when Sasaki's pilot tried to turn the steering wheel, it turned out that the Boeing did not obey the steering wheels.
On the screen of the ground dispatcher, the signal "7700" appeared, which meant that the ship was in distress. The commander of the ship reported the accident, but neither he himself nor the ground services had any idea what exactly happened.
Passengers and crew put on oxygen masks, which are triggered in the event of a depressurization of the aircraft.
30 minutes of madness
The commander and co-pilot tried to force the airliner to take a reverse course, but the situation deteriorated rapidly. The Boeing began to sway along all three axes with increasing amplitude. The huge car entered the so-called "Dutch step" mode. Passengers on board felt bad, panic began. Some, tearing sheets of paper from their notebooks, began to write farewell notes to their relatives, the rest cried or prayed.
In the cockpit at this moment, the pilots fought with the distraught aircraft, trying to control it without rudders, using only the thrust of the engines.
Wreckage of a JAL 123 Japan Airlines plane. Frame youtube.com
By differentiating the thrust of the left and right turbines, the crew managed to turn the plane in the direction of Tokyo.
At this time on the ground, controllers offered various options for emergency landing sites, including a US Air Force base. However, Takahama and Sasaki at that moment did not have to choose - at every second they could finally lose the ability to control the liner.
Attempts to start a descent in the area of Mount Fujiyama have failed. At 18:41, the retired Boeing made a circle with a radius of 4 km over the city of Otsuki. At the cost of incredible efforts, the commander again managed to force the plane to go on the desired course.
At 18:47, Takamaha told the controllers that the plane was uncontrollable and they were about to crash into the mountain. But here, too, the crew managed to avoid danger. However, after this, the Boeing began to rapidly lose altitude. Flying over the Izu Peninsula and Suruga Bay, the plane proceeded in a northwest direction.
The unmanaged liner ended up in a mountainous area, which made the chances of rescue minimal. But the crew did not abandon their attempts to take the situation under control.
Trying to avoid a collision with another mountain, the commander increased the thrust of the engines, but the effect turned out to be the opposite: the plane almost fell into a tailspin. Using the maximum thrust of the engines and the extension of the flaps from the emergency electrical system, the crew managed to align the Boeing. However, the liner, lowering its nose, rushed to the next peak. Masami Takamaha again managed to level the car, but there was no time left to avoid a collision with the mountain. After hitting the tops of trees with its wing, the plane turned over and at 18:56 at high speed crashed into the wooded slope of Mount Otsutaka at an altitude of 1457 meters, 112 kilometers north-west of Tokyo. A fire broke out at the crash site.
Wreckage of a JAL 123 Japan Airlines plane. Frame youtube.com
Saved four, killed dozens
The US Air Force C-130 aircraft located the Boeing crash site 30 minutes after the crash. The coordinates were given to Japanese rescuers. The rescue helicopter arrived at the scene and found the wreckage lying on a steep slope, which was difficult to land on. In addition, the area of the fall was engulfed in fire. The commander of the helicopter, Suzu Amori, decided to return to base, reporting that no traces of the presence of survivors were found.
The rescue team arrived at the crash site only 14 hours later, not expecting to meet the living. What a shock the search engines experienced when they found four passengers of the liner at once on the spot, who, in addition to injuries, received hypothermia due to a night spent on the mountain.
Memorial to Flight 123 in Fujioka. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org/ Qurren
Four women survived the crash: 26-year-old Yumi Ochiai, 34-year-old Hiroko Yoshizaki with her 8-year-old daughter Mikiko and 12-year-old Keiko Kawakami.
Yumi Ochiai was a Japan Airlines flight attendant who did not work on that flight, but was on a private trip. It was she who managed to give the most information about what was happening on board.
Keiko Kawakami was found by rescuers on a tree, on which she was thrown during a plane crash. In addition to the disaster, the girl witnessed the death of her father - the man survived, she heard his voice, but he did not survive the 14-hour wait of the rescuers.
The testimony of the surviving passengers and the results of the forensic examination indicate that dozens of people from the JAL 123 flight survived after the plane crash, but died due to the fact that the rescuers did not begin the operation immediately. Some of the deceased were still alive for about 10 hours, but did not receive help.
Resignation and hara-kiri
At the crash site, they found "black boxes", as well as a lot of suicide notes from passengers.
Japan has experienced a real shock. Distraught with grief, relatives ransacked the offices of Japan Airlines, its employees avoided appearing in crowded places. Airline President Yashimoto Takagi resigned without waiting for the investigation to be completed. Japan Airlines' chief technical officer at Haneda Airport went even further by making himself a hara-kiri.
During the inspection of the technical condition of other Japan Airlines aircraft, an unsightly picture was revealed - a mass of malfunctions and malfunctions.
But an answer was needed to the main question - why did flight JAL 123 die?
It quickly became clear that we were not talking about a terrorist attack. On August 13, 1985, a Japanese naval self-defense destroyer picked up the debris of the vertical and horizontal tail of the crashed Boeing floating in Sagami Bay. This meant that in flight the plane lost its keel and elevators.
Experts said that in such accidents, the Boeing was not only doomed, but had to collapse almost immediately. Pilots Masami Takahama and Yutaka Sasaki did the impossible, keeping the liner in the air for another half hour. In the end, their skill saved four human lives. It could have saved even more if not for the 14-hour delay of the rescuers.
But how could a huge passenger plane, not subjected to shelling or terrorist attacks, lose its tail?
Monument at the crash site. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org/ nattou
"Attacker" in Japanese
The study of the flight biography of the Boeing helped to get on the trail. On June 2, 1978, due to a pilot error, the JA8119 board hit the runway of Osaka Airport with its tail section, as a result of which the tail pressure bulkhead was damaged - the bulkhead separating the tail passenger compartment of the liner, which maintains approximately constant air pressure, from the leaking tail section of the aircraft.
The airliner was repaired in Japan under the supervision of Boeing engineers. According to the technology, it was ordered to strengthen the damaged halves of the pressure bulkhead using a one-piece reinforcement plate, secured by three rows of rivets. However, the technicians doing the work, instead of installing a single amplifier with three rows of rivets, used two separate reinforcing elements, one of which was secured with a double row of rivets, and the other with only a single one.
The technicians did not consider this "innovation" a serious violation, and the aircraft really continued to fly successfully. But during takeoffs and landings, the loads gradually destroyed the metal at the drilling sites. The catastrophe became inevitable - the only question was when it would happen.
This whole situation seems like a Japanese adaptation of the classic story by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov "The Malefactor". It might have seemed funny if it hadn't caused hundreds of deaths.
On August 12, 1985, during takeoff, the pressure bulkhead could not withstand the pressure and collapsed, interrupting the pipelines of the hydraulic systems. High-pressure air from the cabin hit the vertical tail fins, knocking it out like a champagne cork. Boeing lost control …
Japan Airlines had to restore its damaged reputation for a very long time, Boeing Corporation tightened the rules for the repair of liners and carried out an urgent check of its aircraft of various airlines in the world to prevent such incidents.
Here are just 520 ruined human lives can not be returned.