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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.
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A photo taken by a witness on the ground appears to show Flight 123 missing its tailfin
Credit: Wikipedia
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The last photo taken on board the fatal Japan Airlines flight shows oxygen masks hanging
Credit: Reddit
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The plane was headed to Osaka after departing Tokyo
Credit: Reddit
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Japan Airlines (JAL) flight 123 crash site
Credit: Getty
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Members of the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force in a rescue operation at the crash site at the ridge of Mount Takamagahara
Credit: Getty - Contributor
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Photo dated 13 August 1985 shows a wing from the Japan Air Lines Boeing 747 that crashed
Credit: AFP
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".
