Doomed pilot

The single most catastrophic air disaster in aviation history witnessed the desperate pilot speaking "harrowing" final words as he faced his imminent death.

In 1985 a Boeing 747 jetliner plunged into a mountain range just north west of Tokyo - in Ueno, Gunma, Japan.

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Among the wreckage of the Japan Airlines aircraft and the souls who tragically died on board, an investigation meant the black box was retrieved. The information inside it was horrifying, according to France 24.

The cockpit voice recording left aviation journalist David Learmount, who has investigated and reported on air incidents for almost five decades, shocked.

David said reading the CVR transcript was so distressing that it left him in tears, reports the Daily Star.

David, a consulting editor on Flightglobal magazine told The Mirror: "I've lost count of the number of CVRS I've listened to and transcripts I've read from accidents - and the Japan Airlines 123 remains the only one that ever made me cry.

"The transcript was so harrowing I could not listen to the CVR. The pilots were talking to each other in a state of deep distress because they didn't know what was going on and what they could do.

"It wasn't just fear. They wanted to save their airplane, to save their own lives and the lives of everybody on board, and they didn't know what to do. You've never heard that kind of distress."

The ill-fated aircraft departed on August 12 from Tokyo's Haneda Airport. The terminal was teeming with thousands attempting to return home as it was the eve of Obon - a Japanese Buddhist tradition when much of the nation customarily pays tribute to their ancestors, frequently travelling back to their hometowns for family gatherings.

At 6.12pm, Japan Airlines 123 departed bound for Osaka, 400 kilometres to the west. It was loaded nearly to full capacity.

509 passengers and a crew of 15. The scheduled flight duration was 52 minutes. The most experienced pilot aboard was Captain Masami Takahama, 49.

Takahama was amongst the airline's most senior training captains. He was assisting the First Officer Yutaka Saski, 39, who was commanding the flight.

Also present was Hiroshi Fukuda, an experienced flight engineer.

During the initial minutes following departure, everything appeared normal. As the aircraft ascended, the air pressure differential between the atmosphere within the cabin and the atmosphere beyond the cabin increased progressively.

Roughly 12 minutes after departure, the aircraft suffered a deafening explosion. Oxygen masks descended before terrified passengers.

The cabin altitude warning was sounding, notifying the pilots that the atmosphere within the aircraft had become too rarefied to sustain breathing.

The flight crew transmitted an emergency signal to air traffic control. Captain Masami Takahama requested a return to Haneda - now 70 miles behind them.

He remained oblivious to the fact that the bang heard in the cockpit stemmed from a rupture at the aircraft's rear, and this surge of pressure had torn away a substantial portion of the plane's tail, including the rudder, the auxiliary power unit, and several other vital control systems.

The captain instructed his first officer to turn right towards Haneda but he began banking too sharply. Yet regardless of the first officer's actions, he was unable to level the aircraft's wings.

Alarmed flight engineer Hiroshi Fukuda could now see that hydraulic pressure had plummeted. The aircraft had suffered complete hydraulics failure and there was no checklist to address this catastrophic situation.

Flight 123 started swinging from side to side like a falling leaf - a sickening motion for passengers. Deprived of hydraulic power, the pilots could no longer manage the aircraft's pitch.

It started plunging up and down hundreds of metres at a time in a frightening rollercoaster pattern.

Passengers started writing farewell messages to loved ones, which were subsequently discovered in the wreckage. Utilising the engine power, they managed to reduce the erratic movements and even turn the aircraft briefly.

"By increasing engine power on the left side, the plane would turn to the right. Increasing power on the right side, the airplane would turn to the left. So that helped. However, they still thought they could attempt to control the plane manually, which they couldn't," said David.

Meanwhile, the pilots' cognitive abilities were being compromised by hypoxia - having been too preoccupied to don their oxygen masks. In the cabin, passengers were depleting their oxygen supply.

Their optimal chance was a controlled emergency landing at Haneda, but the aircraft needed to descend. The flight engineer proposed they could deploy the landing gear without hydraulic power.

For the first time since departing Tokyo, the plane had dropped beneath 20,000 feet.

A reduced altitude presented a fresh peril. Directly in the aircraft's path rose a formidable mountain range.

The plane began plummeting at more than 18,000 feet per minute, 10 times the standard descent rate.

"Raise nose, raise nose.... power" were the captain's final words as the ground proximity alarm buzzed around him before the CVR cut out on impact. The pilots fought a losing battle for almost 30 minutes before the aircraft struck the Mount Takamagahara region, near Mount Fuji.

The right wing tip and its outermost engine collided with the mountain ridge and was torn away. The plane flipped onto its back and hurtled into the mountainside at hundreds of kilometres per hour, erupting into a massive fireball.

Remarkably, there were some survivors. Among them was a 12-year-old girl whose parents and sister targically died in the crash.

Her family had been seated towards the rear of the aircraft, where the impact forces were considerably less severe than at the front, and fortune shielded them from the deadly debris.

The inquiry into the disaster concluded that a botched repair carried out on the aircraft seven years earlier had ultimately triggered the catastrophic failure. During a landing in Osaka in 1978, the pilot had angled the plane's nose too steeply upward and struck the tail against the runway.

The rear pressure bulkhead, a vital structural element within aircraft specifically engineered to sustain cabin pressure, sustained severe damage.

Boeing engineers carried out the flawed repair - which led to an ever-weakening structure. It was never a matter of whether it would fail, but simply when.

David said: "It was a patch-up job, not a repair. They took a shortcut trying to fix it and put the plane back in action."

Over the following years, repeated pressurisation cycles during flight placed mounting strain on the incorrectly mended section. The resulting cracks produced metal fatigue and, ultimately, the complete detachment of the aircraft's tail.

By 12th August 1985, the plane had completed more than 12,000 flights since the dangerously inadequate repair. Yet on that particular journey, the compromised bulkhead finally reached its breaking point.

The sudden decompression also destroyed the hydraulic systems, leaving the aircraft impossible to control, despite the crew's frantic attempts to avert disaster.

Boeing overhauled the tail design of the 747, ensuring that sudden pressure surges in the tail plane would no longer trigger the type of structural collapse that brought down flight 123, while also redesigning the hydraulic systems so that the destruction of the tail section would not lead to the complete failure of all hydraulic functions.

Japan Airlines similarly overhauled its maintenance protocols, introducing more rigorous oversight of critical repair work and strengthening its routine inspection procedures.

Despite the crash being Boeing's responsibility, the airline bore the brunt of widespread public outrage across Japan. In the aftermath, Japan Airlines paid 780million yen ($7.6million) to the bereaved families — not as formal compensation, but as "condolence money".

The carrier ultimately chose not to pursue criminal proceedings against Boeing.

Japan Airlines president Yasumoto Takagi stepped down from his position. The firm's maintenance manager, Hiroo Tominaga, died by suicide.

Susuma Tajima, the engineer who inspected and cleared the 747SR for departure before its fateful final flight, also took his own life in the wake of the tragedy.