Second F-35B jet forced to make emergency landing
The £88 million warplane, one of the world's most advanced stealth aircraft, was diverted to Kagoshima International Airport at around 11.30am local time after suffering a malfunction, Japan's defence ministry said.
It had been conducting a sortie from the HMS Prince of Wales as part of the UK Carrier Strike Group (UKCSG), a naval task force currently deployed to the Indo-Pacific region.
The jet had an engineering issue and is undergoing further inspections to enable it to return to the carrier group as soon as possible, the Ministry of Defence confirmed.
Footage showed the aircraft parked near the runway at around 2pm local time, with no visible damage.
The incident caused the airport to close its runway for around 20 minutes while the plane was moved to a taxiway for checks to be carried out. 'The aircraft landed at Kagoshima Airport due to a malfunction,' Japan's defence ministry said.
On June 14, an F-35B from the UKCSG ran into bad weather over the Indian Ocean and was forced to land at Thiruvananthapuram Airport in Kerala in southern India.
Because of a technical problem, reportedly a hydraulic failure, it was unable to take-off and remained stranded at the airport for over a month.
The F-35 Lightening is a fifth-generation stealth multi-role jet developed and manufactured in the US by Lockheed Martin.
The F-35B variant has vertical take-off and landing capabilities, making it suitable for use on aircraft carriers.
Though billed as the world's most advanced warplane, the F-35 programme has been dogged by reliability problems. A declassified 2024 Pentagon report found that the 'overall reliability, maintainability and availability of the US fleet remains below service expectations'.
Britain currently has 37 F-35Bs in service, which are jointly operated by the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. A total of 47 expected to be delivered by the end of 2025.
In June, the Government announced plans to buy at least 12 F-35As, which would be capable of carrying nuclear weapons.
One F-35B was lost in November 2021 when it crashed after taking off from the HMS Queen Elizabeth in the Mediterranean.
The UKCSG includes the HMS Prince of Wales carrier and several escort ships. It has been conducting joint training with Japan's Self-Defense Forces and the US military, with exercises scheduled to continue until August 12.
The deployment, called Operation Highmast, is intended to demonstrate Britain's commitment to security in the Indo-Pacific and its ability to operate alongside allies in the region.
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The Sun
an hour ago
- The Sun
Final pics show Japan Airlines Flight 123 mins before crash that left 520 dead… & the critical failure that spelled doom
FOUR decades on, the doomed Japan Airlines Flight 123 crash remains one of the world's worst aviation disasters of all time. Haunting final pictures show the jet just moments before it crashed because of a critical failure - killing 520 people on board. 7 7 Tragedy struck on August 12, 1985 when the Boeing 747SR-46 jet crashed just 62 miles northwest of Tokyo. On board the jet were 509 passengers and 15 crew members. Only four of them survived. The flight, dubbed the "Titanic of Japan", took off from Tokyo and was headed to Osaka but tragically crashed in the remote area of remote mountain area of Mount Takamagahara. And to date, it remains the worst disaster in the history of Japanese aviation. One of the last few pictures shows the Jet missing its tailfin. Another picture, thought to be the final picture taken on board, shows oxygen masks hanging from the ceiling. It is thought that the plane was perfectly fine, and the journey began normally after all the routine checks. But just 12 minutes after takeoff, First Officer Yutaka Sasaki and Captain Masami Takahama noticed a tremor tear through the plane. The jet decompressed rapidly, which caused the ceiling near the rear bathrooms to collapse. How pilots cutting engines sparked TWO plane disasters after South Korea & India crashes as calls for cockpit CCTV grow It extensively damaged the fuselage and destroyed the plane's vertical stabiliser and all four hydraulic lines. Moments after the tremor was detected, the air condensed into a fog, forcing the oxygen masks down. For a terrifying 30 minutes, the pilots fought hard to claim control of the plane, but the jet was in a vicious and disorienting cycle of falling and then rising. Passengers shouted as they were thrown around the plane by the rapid spiralling, while the pilots fought to bring the jet to safety. But the out-of-control plane continued to descend and got closer to the mountains, where it crashed and exploded. 7 According to reports, Captain Takahama made a last-ditch effort to keep the aircraft aloft by using the engine thrust to ascend and fall. He is believed to have yelled: "This is the end!" Around 20 minutes after impact, US Air Force serviceman Michael Antonucci reported the crash site. In the aftermath of the crash, the search and rescue efforts were delayed, and survivors were not found until several hours later. This delay likely contributed to the high death toll, as some victims who survived the initial impact died before help could arrive. Japanese officials delayed sending a rescue crew, assuming that no one had survived, and told Antonucci not to discuss the disaster. 7 7 7 The Japanese military only sent rescue teams in the following morning, a whole 12 hours after the crash had been reported. Antonucci revealed a decade later: "Four people survived. Many more could have. "At the time it occurred, I was ordered not to speak about it." One doctor involved in the rescue mission said: "If the discovery had come 10 hours earlier, we could have found more survivors." Yumi Ochiai, a survivor, claimed to have heard other survivors wailing all through the night, until the intense cold finally got to them. Antonucci added that had it "not been for efforts to avoid embarrassing Japanese authorities", a team of US Marines could have searched the wreckage less than two hours after the crash. The puzzle began to come together as more teams were dispatched to retrieve body and plane parts. Two years later, after a comprehensive investigation, Japan's Aircraft Accident Investigation Commission determined that the decompression was caused by a botched repair by Boeing workers. The same aircraft had thudded heavily upon landing at Itami Airport in June 1978, causing extensive tail damage. The impact also cracked open the pressure bulkhead, necessitating immediate repairs. However, Boeing's repair personnel utilised two spice plates parallel to the break in the bulkhead instead of one, rendering the repair job worthless. According to Ron Schleede, a member of the US National Transportation Safety Board, the crew did everything they could to avoid the disaster, which was "inevitable". World's Worst Air Disasters Tenerife Airport Disaster, 1977 On March 27, 1977, on the island of Tenerife two Boeing 747 jets collided on the runway in the deadliest accident in aviation history. The accident occurred as a result of heady mix bombings, organisational issues and fog. A bomb explosion at the airport on Gran Canaria caused many flights to be diverted Los Rodeos Airport on the popular holiday island. Among two of the flights affected were KLM Flight 4805 and Pan Am Flight 1736, neither would leave the island. Tragedy struck due to radio miscommunication causing the Dutch plane to rocket down the runway at take-off speed while the US aircraft was taxing in the opposite direction. The resulting collision resulted in the death of 583 people. Malaysian Airlines 370, 2014 The MH370 Boeing was seen for the last time on military radar at 2.14am, close to the south of Phuket Island in the Strait of Malacca. Half an hour later, the airline lost contact with the plane. It had been due to land at around 6.30am. On July 29, 2015 - more than a year after the plane's disappearance - debris was found by volunteers cleaning a beach in St Andre, Reunion. A week later investigators confirmed the debris did belong to MH370, but it did not help to locate the plane as it had drifted in the water. Theories abound about what happened to the missing jet but the true cause of the crash may never be known. Malaysian Airlines 17, 2014 Flight MH17 was as passenger flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur that was shot down over eastern Ukraine on July 17 2014. All passengers and crew perished putting the death toll at 298 in the deadliest case of 'airliner shootdown' in history, 80 children was on board when it went down. It was hit by a Russian made Buk surface to air missile fired from Ukrainian separatist held land near Donetsk. Air France Flight 447, 2009 On June 1 2009 Air France Flight 447 disappeared off the radar off the coast of Brazil. The airline took six hours to acknowledge the loss of the plane and no trace was found for days. All 216 passengers and 12 crew were never seen again after the Rio to Paris flight crashed out of the sky. Investigations went on to prove that the crash was caused by the pilot flying to high and stalling the engines causing the plane to fall out of the sky and into the Atlantic ocean. Uruguayan Flight 571, 1972 The chartered Air Force plane carrying 45 people, including a Uruguayan rugby team, crashed in the Andes in South America. More than a quarter of the passengers lost their lives on impact and a number of others quickly succumbed to the cold of the mountains or injuries sustained in the crash. Of the 27 who survived the initial impact and cold a further eight were killed in an avalanche a few days after the incident. Eventually 16 people were rescued after spending more than two months in the freezing conditions of the mountains. But those survivors had been forced to eat the corpses of their fellow passengers when faced with starvation. JAT Yugoslav Airlines Flight 367, 1972 The McDonnell Douglas DC-9-32 model aircraft was blown up by a bomb placed on board by Croatian fascist militant group the Ustase as it made its way back to Yugoslavia from Sweden. All but one of the 28 passengers and crew died on the plane but one stewardess made it into the record books. Lockerbie Bombing, 1988 Pan Am Flight 103 was flying from Frankfurt to Detroit via London and New York on 21 December 1988. While over the Scottish town of Lockerbie a bomb was detonated aboard the flight, killing all passengers and crew. Eleven of the town's residents on the ground were also killed by falling debris, bringing the death toll to 270. Air India Crash, 2025 The Boeing 787 Dreamliner with 242 passengers on board - including 53 Brits - smashed into a doctors' hostel in Ahmedabad in the west of India. The plane was headed to London Gatwick with 232 passengers and 10 crew on board when it crashed just seconds after take-off. The Dreamliner lost contact just seconds after take-off, according to flight tracking website Flightradar. A final alert was last logged less than a minute after it started the journey from Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport. It had only reached 625ft at the time, officials believe. Seconds before the crash, the Boeing was filmed flying low over the Meghani Nagar residential area with the pilots appearing to be in a desperate bid to keep the plane in the air. Moments later, it was seen disappearing behind buildings before a huge blast was seen in the distance. Brit passenger Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, 40, was the sole survivor of the fatal crash.
Telegraph
a day ago
- Telegraph
The forgotten story of the world's deadliest plane crash
Tragedy generally hits hardest close to home, where the places and locations in question can trigger grief and trauma long after the initial event has slipped queasily into the past. Which might explain why the collective British memory does not easily recall the deadliest plane crash of all time: a catastrophe that took place more than 8,000 miles away, on the other side of the planet, but claimed 520 lives. It did so an exact 40 years ago today, on August 12 1985, on a wild mountainside, 60 miles north-west of Tokyo. The fate of Flight 123 is certainly not forgotten in Japan, where the scarring is still visible (there will be commemorations at the crash site today, as there are every year). True, its loss of life did not match the 583 victims of the Tenerife Air Disaster of March 27 1977, where two Boeing 747s collided on the runway on the largest of the Canary Islands. Nor does it equate to the unique circumstances of the two Boeing 767s flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center on September 11 2001. But Flight 123 holds its own dark position in the annals of aviation – as the deadliest crash involving a single aircraft. A ticking time bomb Perhaps inevitably, with a fatality count of such awful weight, that aircraft was also a 747 – specifically a 747 SR-46, toiling away for Japan Airlines (JAL). 'SR' stands for 'short range', with the plane part of the boom in domestic flights in the Land of the Rising Sun that took hold in the early 1970s. Demand was so high that, in 1972, JAL placed an order with Boeing for a bespoke version of the 'Jumbo Jet' – one adapted for maximum passenger capacity, but with strengthened body structure and landing gear able to cope with the regular take-offs and landings (and considerable stress) inherent in short-haul flying. So it was that the 747 SR-46 emerged from Boeing's Seattle plant with space for 498 travellers; a figure that would rise to 550 after further modification. It made its first commercial flight, for JAL, on October 7 1973. JA8119 – to use its registration number – arrived in the JAL fleet in 1974, and promptly became a workhorse. By the time of its demise in 1985, it had chalked up 25,000 hours of flying, and 18,800 flights; the majority of them quick trips back and forth between Tokyo and Japan's other major cities. Flight 123 – a scheduled service from Haneda Airport in the capital to Itami Airport in Osaka, which should have taken one hour – was the fifth of six short hops it was due to make that day. However, the cause of the disaster was not rooted in that summer afternoon in the mid-1980s. It had been planted seven years earlier – and with a grim symmetry, on the same route. On June 2 1978, JA8119 was damaged by a heavy touch-down at Itami. The landing was so jarring that the 747's tail hit the runway (a 'tailstrike') – so forcefully that this caused cracking in the rear bulkhead, a vital component of any plane's pressurisation system. The breakage was repaired, swiftly but – it would transpire – insufficiently. JA8119 had 8,830 hours on its log at the time of the strike, and would fly on, without much further incident, for 16,170 more. Yet deep within its fuselage, a clock was ticking. The death toll from the crash was tragically inflated by unfortunate timing: August 12 1985 fell within Obon season – a celebration of ancestral spirits, effectively Japan's 'Day of the Dead', which moves around the calendar, but generally sees the Japanese travel home in great numbers to spend time with loved ones. So it was that JA8119 was full of families for its early-evening departure. The records indicate that, of the 524 passengers and crew on board, 502 were Japanese. They included one notable celebrity – the 43-year-old singer and actor, Kyu Sakamoto. 32 unthinkable minutes JA8119 took off from Haneda at 6.12pm, a little behind schedule. For the next 12 minutes, it proceeded as normal. But at 6.24pm, as the 747 SR-46 crossed the coastal waters of Sagami Bay, 50 miles south-west of Tokyo, the decade-old patch-up job on its rear bulkhead finally failed. The plane suffered an explosive decompression which brought down the ceiling at the back of the economy cabin, severed all four hydraulic lines and knocked out the vertical stabiliser. At a stroke, the jet was all but uncontrollable. At the opposite end of the aircraft, Captain Masami Takahama – a 49-year-old pilot of significant experience – remained calm. A distress call was put out; an emergency plan to turn Flight 123 around and return to Haneda was discussed. But it soon became clear that JA8119 was incapable of nuanced manoeuvre. Cockpit recordings suggest its crew was already beginning to suffer from hypoxia, a lack of oxygen in the decompressing jet leading to slow answers and an audible difficulty in comprehending instructions. In the 21 minutes which followed the explosion, JA8119 flew erratically, lurching and rolling, gaining and losing altitude – and, crucially, swerving north, so that it was back over land. Its final 11 minutes were a desperate struggle. By 6.45pm, the jet was descending rapidly, had plunged to 13,500ft (4,100m), and was veering towards high mountains. At 6.46pm, Takahama was heard to utter the weary words: 'This may be hopeless.' At 6.49pm, there was a brief stall, at 9,000ft (2,700m). And while this was corrected, seven minutes later, at 6.56pm, JA8119 clipped a ridge on 1,979m Mount Takamagahara in Japan's central Gunma Prefecture. The collision dislodged the end third of the right wing, and two of the four engines. Now conclusively disabled, the 747 flipped onto its back, struck a second ridge, and exploded. The impact was so violent that it registered on the seismometer at the Shin-Etsu Earthquake Observatory, 100 miles away. It is impossible to say how many people were still alive in the immediate aftermath of the crash, because the rescue mission was as poorly executed as the repair work that had led to the disaster. It was still daytime when JA8119 went into the mountain, but as the light faded, a Japanese military helicopter did a cursory scan of the site, and reported no obvious signs of life. With night imminent, and the terrain challenging, paramedics did not attempt to reach the wreckage until the following morning. Interviewed in her hospital bed, Yumi Ochiai, an off-duty flight attendant who was one of just four survivors – all female; all of whom had been sitting on the left hand side of the cabin, between rows 54 and 60 – remembered seeing lights and listening to the noise of rotor blades after waking up in the charred remains of the plane. She expected help to arrive, she said, but the only sounds she heard for the next few hours were the cries of the injured and dying. The fallout The government response was rather more clear-eyed. The official inquiry, which released its findings on June 19 1987, placed the blame on the inadequate repair in 1978. By that point, JAL president Yasumoto Takagi had already lost his job; he tendered his resignation on August 24 1985, less than a fortnight after the crash. Sadly, the catastrophe claimed two further victims as its aftershocks reverberated around Japan. Two JAL employees – maintenance manager Hiroo Tominaga, and engineer Susumu Tajima, who had inspected JA8119 after the tailstrike incident, and had declared it airworthy – took their own lives, buckling beneath the psychological burden of the disaster. Forty years on, the crash site is home to a memorial; two unadorned stone triangles, set against the slope. The relatives of the dead gather there every August 12, perhaps taking small consolation from Mount Takamagahara's place in Japanese folklore as a parallel to Greece's Mount Olympus; a heavenly home of the gods. There are more tangible echoes as well. Not least the Safety Promotion Center, a museum attached to Haneda Airport, which examines the causes of the disaster, and the lessons to be learnt from it. Among its artefacts are fragments of the plane, and farewell letters written by its passengers in the 32 unthinkable minutes when they were probably aware that they were going to die. JAL has recovered to be Japan's second biggest airline, but suffered an inevitable decline in the wake of Flight 123; passenger numbers fell by a third in the next year, as a wary public avoided the brand. Nonetheless, not everyone affected by the crash was put off flying. Captain Takahama's daughter Yoko became a flight attendant, working for JAL.
BBC News
2 days ago
- BBC News
RAF Henlow jet fighter could be donated to a museum
A post-war jet fighter that has stood as the gate guard outside an RAF station could be donated to an aviation Hawker Hunter aircraft (WT612) has been positioned outside RAF Henlow, Bedfordshire, since the the camp scheduled to close next year, a spokesperson for RAF Henlow said they would look to gift it "to an appropriate aviation museum where it can be restored and used to tell the Hunter story". "RAF Heritage takes aviation history very seriously and will always endeavour to find the best home for retiring aircraft," they said. Current regulations prevent the Ministry of Defence from selling aircraft such as the Hawker their airframes are probably the most common aircraft exhibited with multiple examples on display throughout the country, including at RAF Hendon in London and Imperial War Museum Duxford in Cambridgeshire.A spokesperson for RAF Henlow said that, other than in exceptional circumstances, it was not their policy to gift to a museum that already had one. The Hawker Hunter aircraft (WT612) is one of the world's oldest surviving aircraft of its first flew in 1954 and was a development and testing aircraft until it was grounded three years Royal Air Force Museum said the Hunter was the first high-speed jet fighter with radar and fully-powered flying controls to go into widespread became the RAF's standard single-seat fighter, replacing Meteor, Sabre and Venom aircraft. In 1958, the RAF held a competition to find a suitable type to replace its Middle East-based Venom ground attack fighters. Hawker won with a proposal for a modified Hunter F6, and an order was placed for the conversion of a number of airframes. The last operational Hunter FGA9s were flown by No 8 Squadron until December 1971, although the type continued to be used in training units for a little 1960, Lightnings began to supersede the Labour MP for Hitchin, Alistair Strathern, said that a campaign had been launched asking for people's support in preserving the Hawker Hunter (WT612) as "part of our local and aviation heritage in Henlow".He added: "While the future of RAF Henlow remains uncertain, it's important we safeguard this historic landmark that symbolises our connection to decades of service." Follow Beds, Herts and Bucks news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
