On that ill-fated day, at 18:00, a Japan Airlines Boeing 747SR-46 was preparing to fly from Tokyo to Osaka. The flight belonged to short distances and was supposed to last 54 minutes. Thanks to a special modification of the aircraft model, the board could accommodate 550 passengers.
JAL Flight 123 12 had 509 people and 15 crew members on board at takeoff. The aircraft commander was an experienced pilot, 49-year-old Masami Takahama, who had worked for the airline for 19 years. The co-pilot was 39-year-old Yutaka Sasaki with 10 years of experience.
At 18:12, the plane took off from Tokyo's Haneda Airport. At 18:24, at an altitude of 7200 meters, one of the flight attendants asked the commander if it was possible to start servicing passengers. After receiving an affirmative answer, a loud sound was heard in the cabin, similar to an explosion. The cabin was filled with white smoke.
The pilots had an alarm signaling a sudden drop in pressure inside the fuselage. They could not understand what had happened, and assumed that the landing gear doors had been torn off. The flight engineer at the same time reported a malfunction of the hydraulic system.
The commander of the ship decided to turn the plane around and return to Tokyo, but when the co-pilot tried to turn the helm, it turned out that the Boeing was out of control.
The ground controller received a message with the number "7700", meaning that the plane was in distress. The crew and passengers put on oxygen masks, which are activated in case of depressurization of the aircraft.
The pilots tried with all their might to lie down on the reverse course, but every minute the situation worsened - the plane began to sway along all three axes with increasing amplitude, entering the terrible “Dutch step” mode.
Panic began in the cabin, the passengers became ill. They prayed, wept, tore pages out of notebooks and wrote farewell letters to their loved ones.
At this time, in the cockpit, they tried to regain control over the aircraft, using only the thrust of the engines. Differentiating the thrust of the left and right turbines, the crew still managed to deploy the liner in the direction of Tokyo.
Dispatchers from the ground offered various options for emergency landing aircraft, but the pilots did not have to choose - they could lose control at any second.
Attempts to start a descent in the area of Mount Fuji failed. At 18:41, the plane again went out of control and made a circle with a radius of 4 km over the city of Otsuki. The pilots managed to regain control.
At 18:47, the ship's commander informed the dispatchers that the aircraft was out of control and was about to crash into a mountain. But the crew again managed to avoid a collision. However, immediately after that, the plane began to rapidly lose altitude. Flying over the Izu Peninsula and Suruga Bay, the Boeing found itself in a mountainous area, which made the chances of a happy completion of the flight minimal.
But even in this situation, the crew continued to try to control the thrust of the engines, although at one point the plane almost fell into a tailspin. Using the maximum thrust of the engines and the release of the flaps from the emergency electrical system, the crew managed to level the Boeing. However, the liner, lowering its nose, rushed to the next peak.
The aircraft commander leveled the car, but there was no time left to avoid another collision with the mountain. The wing hit the tops of the trees - the plane rolled over and at 18:56 at high speed crashed into the wooded slope of Mount Otsutaka at an altitude of 1457 meters, 112 kilometers northwest of Tokyo. A fire broke out at the crash site.
The US Air Force C-130 found the crash site 30 minutes after the crash. The coordinates were given to the Japanese, but a rescue helicopter arrived and found that the wreckage lay on a steep slope, landing in this area was difficult.
Moreover, a fire was burning there - the helicopter commander decided to return to the base, reporting that no traces of the presence of survivors were found.
Rescuers arrived after 14 hours, not expecting to meet the living, but there were four alive: 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 worked as a flight attendant for Japan Airlines, but she was on a private trip at the time. It was she who reported the most information about what happened on board.
Rescuers found 12-year-old Keiko in a tree - the girl was thrown out during a plane crash. For some time her father was also alive, but he could not stand the 14-hour wait.
There were many survivors, but in addition to injuries, they received serious hypothermia after a night on the mountain, without waiting for help.
At the crash site, black boxes and numerous letters from the dead to their families were found.
Japan experienced a real shock - the relatives of the victims smashed the offices of Japan Airlines, and its employees avoided appearing in crowded places. The president of the airline resigned without waiting for the results of the investigation, and the head of the technical service at the airport made hara-kiri.
But what caused the plane to crash? On August 13, 1985, a destroyer of the Japanese Naval Self-Defense Forces picked up fragments of the vertical and horizontal tail of a Boeing floating in Sagami Bay. This meant that in flight the aircraft lost its keel and elevators.
With such breakdowns, the aircraft is doomed. Moreover, it was supposed to crash almost immediately, but the pilots managed to keep it in the air for another half an hour. Their skill saved four lives - there could have been many more saved people if not for the 14-hour wait.
AND main question: why did the plane lose its tail in flight?
It turned out that as early as June 2, 1978, due to pilot error, the JA8119 board hit the Osaka airport runway 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, in which approximately constant air pressure is maintained, from the leaky tail section of the aircraft.
The repair was carried out in Japan - it was necessary to strengthen the damaged halves of the pressure bulkhead with the help of a solid reinforcement plate, fixed with three rows of rivets. But instead of installing a single reinforcement with three rows of rivets, the technicians used two separate reinforcing elements, one of which was fixed with a double row of rivets, and the second with just a single one.
The repair team decided that "it will do" - and indeed, the aircraft 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.
On August 12, 1985, the pressure bulkhead could not withstand the pressure from the next take-off and finally collapsed, breaking the pipelines of the hydraulic systems. Air from the cabin under high pressure hit the cavity of the vertical tail stabilizer, knocking it out like a cork from a bottle of champagne. The plane lost control.
After the disaster, Japan Airlines took a very long time to restore its reputation, and Boeing Corporation tightened the rules for the repair of liners and conducted an urgent check of its liners around the world. But people's lives could not be returned.
- When did you start searching for the bodies of Tu-154 passengers?
We were given the alarm somewhere around 7 am on Sunday. For another 30 minutes we waited for the coordinates of the main search area - this information came from air traffic controllers. They went out to sea on boats. Soon, helicopters of the search and rescue service of the Ministry of Defense appeared in the sky, then small ships and ships with divers began to approach.
When was the first body discovered?
I didn't watch the clock. In addition, 10 boats worked at once. We recovered the first body about three hours after the start of the helicopter pickup operation. Approximately one and a half kilometers from the coast.
- And who was it?
A woman of about 40 years old. A tightly closed red suitcase floated next to her.
- Judging by your answer about age, she was not disfigured?
She didn't have eyes...
Was her clothes intact?
She was wearing a badly torn cloak... And she was all broken... the impression that without bones... We raised two more from the water about a kilometer from the shore. Two military men, in uniform... Also torn... Young. Well, thirty, thirty-five years ... And the bodies are broken, broken ... That's it, I can't talk anymore, it's hard ... Yes, and there is a lot of work.
- Traces of burns on clothes, on the bodies, you did not notice?
The devil knows... The clothes are wet... And it's hard to judge by the skin on the face - it was burned or torn off by something hard upon impact...
The plane, it turns out, fell apart in the air. This version is also supported by the fact that the Tu-154 chassis was found near the coast.
EXPERT OPINION
"Either an explosion, or the strongest blow to the water"
The military medical examiner Captain II rank Alexander KOLESNIKOV answers the question "KP"
Photo of the wreckage of the fuselage of the fallen Tu-154 raised from the bottom of the Black Sea
As a result of a search operation in the Black Sea, part of the fuselage was pulled out of the water crashed plane Ministry of Defense Tu-154. At the crash site of the liner - near Adler, almost opposite the airport - specialists from the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Emergency Situations are working.
The middle part of the fuselage was found about 1.8 kilometers from the coast of Sochi at a depth of about 25 meters. The fragment pulled out of the water reaches about five meters in length and five in width, Komsomolskaya Pravda correspondent Vladimir Velengurin reports from the site of the search and rescue operation.
Specialists from the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Emergency Situations are working at the crash site of the liner.
The middle part of the fuselage was found about 1.8 kilometers from the coast.
As participants in the operation told KP, before falling into the water, the plane was moving along the glide path towards the water - the runway is located perpendicular to the coastline.
The recovered fragment lay at the bottom at a depth of about 25 meters.
Rescuers pulled out of the water part of the fuselage of the fallen Tu-154 aircraft of the Ministry of Defense.
The fragment pulled out of the water reaches about five meters in length and five in width.
Night July flight from Alma-Ata to Rostov-on-Don. The heat is such that you want to carry a fan in your hands all the time, directed at yourself. The fathers of the family have sent the suitcases to the luggage, hugging their wives and holding the hands of their children. On board, 30 kids and schoolchildren are discussing what kind of castles they will build on the coast and how they will buy themselves in the sea - the flight after Rostov was supposed to go to Simferopol.
View of Alma-Ata airport. Photo: © RIA Novosti / Fred Greenberg
Girls who go to the resort think about how they will sunbathe, and in the evenings they will run to dances or just listen to the sound of the surf. Or maybe someone will spin the novel. With such thoughts, everyone goes to the Aeroflot "carcass".
They won't build it, they won't spin it. The liner will crash 1 minute 40 seconds after takeoff and shatter into pieces. The victims of the largest air crash in the country will be 166 passengers and crew members. Nobody survived on the plane.
Meanwhile on earth
In private houses on Fedoseeva Street, windows trembled as the captain of the aircraft, Yuri Kulagin, tried to avoid a collision with the ground. The fact is that pilots have often encountered such a situation: the “carcass” sinks by 30 meters, and then continues to climb. This time the fall continued.
The liner crashed, hitting the farm with its bow. But the movement continued: so, he "jumped" three times, falling apart on the go. Parts of the bodies of passengers and crew flew into huge cracks - they were literally torn to pieces by seat belts and debris. In the next three days they will be found on trees, on the roofs of houses, in baths and just on the ground.
At some point, 39 tons of fuel spilled all over the street, smearing the soil, the walls of houses, roofs and windows.
We lived two streets away and at night we heard an explosion, we thought: the bomb exploded. They ran out into the street, and there - a glow, as bright as day, a terrible smell of burning kerosene hit my nose. In the morning we learned that the plane crashed near the private sector, everyone died, people's houses and gardens burned down. Soon we moved to another area, away from the airport, - told the media local Alexander Baev.
Broke into different sides and luggage. After the lampposts were knocked down by the plane, the field flared up. A mixture of kerosene, burning, and disinfectants hung in the air.
Many employees of the airport lived nearby, writes "Essays on the history of Alma-Ata". So, at one of them, Sergey, all three sides of the house were burned, the second floor and the vineyard burned to the ground.
The man took his family to safe place, and he went in search of black boxes. Later, dozens of bodies were found in his garden.
Commission conclusions
Like many other Soviet plane crashes and hijackings, the story was not covered by the media. Some details began to emerge much later. However, even the list of the dead has not been made public so far.
At the crash site, Alexander Shengardt, the chief aircraft designer of the Tu-154, worked as part of the commission assembled after the incident. According to him, there could be a human factor. The initial medical board concluded that there was alcohol in the blood of the dead pilots. However, a week later, specialists from Moscow denied this statement.
It was in the news that, in connection with the plane crash, for the relatives of the victims, today a very difficult procedure for identifying the bodies is ahead. We thought so too in 2006.Physicians and psychologists prepared to meet people with horror. There were ambulances. We all thought that we would have to save, pump out, there would be screams, tears, and so on. But it turned out not to be the case at all.
I'll tell you how it was...
Identification It is carried out in two ways: live and on a computer. In order of priority. I participated in computer identification.
Even before the first person was invited, we were shown pictures. It's horrible. Fragments of burnt bodies. Children's hands, feet. The remaining intact pieces of colored clothing peek out. I still remember a piece of the baby's blue panties. It is unknown if it is a boy or a girl. In these parts, nothing was clear at all.
In the morning, people began to approach the offices. The installation of computers and other preparations were in progress ...
People were very nervous. There was one question: "When and let's already soon ..."
And so they started to launch. There were five computers. Therefore, they launched five teams of relatives.
The doctors and I waited in horror for fainting. And there is none of that. No tears, no screams. Nothing. Monotonous work and only: "Stop, return the previous picture. Here is something similar. No, not that. Next"
Many were found by jewelry, chains, earrings. Adults by tattoos, who had them. In general, it was a very long procedure, it took a whole day. Some did not find their own and then went to the second identification ...
And now about identification by bodies. It took place in the morgue of Donetsk. All the bodies and fragments were laid out on the street and people, they were also launched in batches, passed and looked for something similar to their own. And there were no tantrums or tears either.
Then I saw with my own eyes that serious employment removes emotions, and hence suffering. Though it's certainly temporary...
The worst thing is when the body is not there. Then it turns out that it burned down and there is nothing to bury.
There was one curiosity. Maybe I'm writing about this in vain. But it is probably better to know about such stories than not to know. Even though it's very sad.
One little boy was identified by two families. They began to quarrel and each prove that he was his.
In general, everyone wanted to pick up the remains so that there was something to bury. It was a very important question.
And so they look for signs and both find them. And on the very first day of arrival, all relatives were tested for DNA. But the result will not come soon.
In general, the doctor saw in this boy that he was circumcised. And so the truth was established...
And the services of doctors and psychologists on the day of identification - it’s good that they weren’t useful.
PS. Who did not read, I wrote about my participation in such an event
Valery Valiulin
Is it necessary, right?
Based on real events. Names and surnames are excluded.
Arriving early in the morning for the service, to perform the next training flights, I was very upset - the flights were repulsed. Flights are not often repulsed, mainly due to weather conditions that do not allow their implementation, in the absence of weather at alternate airfields, in case of accidents and disasters of the same type of aircraft, and there are few other reasons to reschedule flights to another day. The reason for the end of flights stunned me - in the unit from which I transferred three years earlier, my friend, the commander of the ship with which I flew, once two years in the same crew, died.
Subsequently, the flight and engineering staff of all aviation units were informed of the results of the investigation of the disaster, the reasons that led to the death of people and the loss of the combat vehicle, recommendations on measures to prevent the recurrence of such tragedies in the future.
The colonel, who arrived from Moscow, hung a “sheet” * in front of the aviation squadron, measuring “two hundred and twenty by one hundred and eighty”, with an unfinished route from the take-off airfield to the point of disaster marked on it, trying to convince us that on high altitude there was a slow depressurization of the cockpit. That all crew members, in violation of the instructions, flew at high altitude with relaxed oxygen masks, and lost consciousness due to lack of oxygen and a decrease in cabin pressure. That the plane, being uncontrollable, fell into a tailspin, switched to supersonic speed, collapsed in the air, fell to the ground. Catapulted out of six crew members, only the navigator of the ship.
I listened carefully to the speech of the flight safety inspector and did not believe what I heard! So that such a mistake could be made by the commander, with whom we once deliberately carried out a five-hour cross-country flight on an aircraft with a faulty cabin pressurization system, which was always notified in the air about the well-being of the crew members?! And now I hear his voice: “Crew, pull up oxygen masks, report on how you feel!” Not! This is a lie in the name of preserving the positions of the chiefs, hiding the true cause of the death of five crew members and the loss of a combat vehicle.
Years passed. Until the day I die, the grief for the deceased friend and his crew will not leave me. He often dreams of me. He dreams of his face strained at work, his eyes intently watching the instruments, his hands, in leather gloves, not releasing the steering wheel.
All the comrades from the former regiment, with whom the flight service later brought me together, I asked about the details of this incident. Everyone agreed on one thing - the authorities hid the true cause of this disaster, but no one could know it for sure, they only expressed their assumptions.
Fellow soldiers who tried to "talk" the navigator, who was a survivor, capable of revealing the true cause of the incident, with the help of cognac and vodka, could not squeeze anything out of his mouth, sealed by the command.
When the rescue team, in the snowy mountains, on a frosty February day, took the navigator of the ship, who had landed on a parachute, from the place of the death of the crew, he did not have a headset on! To tear the headset off his head could only in one case, if he was not fastened. Consequently, the navigator in flight was not in an oxygen mask, which is attached to the headset, he breathed the cabin air, but he did not lose consciousness! Repeatedly in flights, as a ship's navigator, I had to unfasten my oxygen mask with the permission of the commander, it prevents me from leaning tightly against the rubber tube of the radar sight screen, and prevents me from seeing well the illumination from ground landmarks and targets. So being a navigator without a mask at any stage of the flight is real.
Being already retired, I told my neighbor, a retired colonel, about my disbelief in the results of the investigation of this catastrophe, with whom we were united by common hobbies for literature and, joint in the past, service. Already, ready for his imminent departure from life, struck by an oncological disease, he told me the true reason that led to the tragic death of a friend of my youth:
“You are right, Valera, that you do not recognize this false version of this catastrophe. On the plane, the engineering and technical staff installed "KPZh-30" with unacceptable residues of alcohol vapor in it! Those who carried out the cleaning of oxygen equipment, which is important for the life support of the crew in flight, did not comply with the requirements set by the instructions, installed the KPZh-30 aircraft on the aircraft without blowing it until it was completely cleared of alcohol vapors. The flight lasted 52 minutes. The crew breathed oxygen mixed with alcohol vapors in flight, and was simply poisoned! This is the second time in our Air Force that people have died because of such a violation, bordering on a crime. First similar case with the death of the crew happened so long ago that they stopped remembering him or, as this time, they hid the true cause of the disaster in order to preserve the "skins" of the perpetrators. According to the official position I occupied in those years, I was aware of the true cause of this catastrophe. False information about the causes of that catastrophe was then brought to the majority of the flight and engineering personnel. Blame the dead so as not to destroy the families of many living - this principle has always pursued the Air Force. Until now, no one knows how many of the first cosmonauts died in space before the flight of Yuri Gagarin.
The era of digital civilization has arrived. I found everything I could find on the Internet about the effects of alcohol vapor on the human body when they were inhaled, made conclusions about how pilots could behave under the influence of alcohol that penetrated into the blood and into the human brain directly through the lungs, bypassing the stomach. The performances are terrible!
With the initial intoxication, human muscular activity is activated and the pilots could do anything, unreasonably “carrying the steering wheel”, adding and decreasing engine speed, take the plane beyond critical angles of attack and roll, beyond unacceptable flight speeds. In the future, a person drugged by alcohol vapors falls asleep and may simply die! I know two cases of people dying in the air when: one - he drank heavily on the eve of the flight as a passenger; the other took a flat bottle of cognac into the air so as not to get bored on a long flight in his single-seat suspended cabin and did not have a task for this flight in his specialty. There were even more cases of loss of consciousness in flight by those who took off “with a hangover”, having managed to “slip through” the pre-flight medical control.
For the rest of my life, I imagined myself in the place of the ship's navigator in that ill-fated flight, trying to "see" the actions of the pilots, who were poisoned against their will by alcohol vapors.
The cause of a similar air crash in the Air Force, which killed people many years before this disaster, was either hidden or forgotten. Lack of familiarity with the incident of the flight and technical crew and led to its repetition many years later. I do not remember such that when checking equipment before a flight, the instructions required to sniff the oxygen supplied to the masks from the KPZh-30. “Yes, it always smells of alcohol!”, Any flyer will say.
Traffic police officers are equipped with a device that determines the presence of alcohol in the body of drivers of vehicles, but aircraft crews do not have a device that can determine the presence of alcohol in the oxygen before departure, which they will have to breathe in flight. Maybe breathalyzers of traffic police officers are suitable for such control of the oxygen equipment of aircraft and can protect the flight crew from forced intoxication in flight ?! So why is there no such check?
Once every six months, a KPZh-30 is removed from each aircraft. Every six months they are washed with alcohol to remove dirt and fats from the system (pure oxygen can ignite when combined with fats!) Then the KPZh-30 is blown with air under a certain pressure, dried before being filled with liquid oxygen. This means that every six months you can expect a similar tragedy if the engineering staff violates the requirements for their maintenance established by the instructions.
How can you hide the truth about the true causes of disasters from people whose lives depend on their awareness?! In twenty-two years of service in aviation, I have never heard of such alcohol poisoning - through the oxygen system!
Later, I asked many colleagues if they had to deal with the fact of the presence of alcohol vapors in oxygen equipment in flight? And I heard: “We just fell out of the plane with the whole crew under the bulldozer by flying over the aircraft after it was repaired at the aircraft factory! The day before, the authorities accused aviation technicians of saving alcohol when washing KPZh-30 for the sake of washing their stomachs with it, so they left enough alcohol vapor in KPZH in order to prove that this is not so.
I also found on the Internet a skirmish between the ejected navigator of the ship and one of his colleagues, who tried to accuse the deceased commander of the ship and members of his crew of illiterate action during the depressurization of the aircraft cabin at high altitude:
The navigator to the "Prosecutor": - I would never write what I am writing now, but you have touched our crew, and there is no one else to answer. As before, I am ironic about the system for determining the best crew, but, at the time of the disaster, our crew was determined to be the best in the regiment. KK*'s mask was on and fully tightened. And he lost consciousnessfor a completely different reason before my eyes.
I was also the navigator of the innocently accused crew commander for two years, and also, joining the navigator who survived the terrible accident, I can defend him without naming him. Our deceased commander was a competent pilot, he knew aerodynamics and aircraft better than many colleagues, he was a first-class pilot who valued the lives of the people he lifted into the air. We have been with him on numerous occasions. difficult situations in the air, from which they competently left. Once we got away from a clear collision in the air with a huge Aeroflot airliner. Then the air traffic controllers made a mistake, bringing the sides at the point of intersection of our route with the air route at the same flight level (one flight altitude), without spreading the planes at the time of its intersection. The commander was the first to see the IL-62 approaching us and "dived" under it. I even saw the faces of the passengers clinging to the windows, we were so dangerously close.
“Killed! Killed!" - shouted the commander's wife, running to the headquarters of the regiment, having learned about the death of her husband, the father of two boys preschool age, and four other members of his crew. How right she was when they tried to inspire her with something completely different.
* Air Force- air Force.
* KK - commander of the ship.
* "sheet" (in the Air Force)– diagram, drawing, visual tutorial, made on a Whatman sheet measuring 220 cm by 180 cm.
* "KPZh-30"– liquid oxygen is stored on the aircraft in oxygen gasifiers arranged according to the typeDewar vessels (KPZh-30, SKG-30, etc.).
