520 people lost their lives that day (Image: Asahi Shimbun via Getty Images)
One of the most devastating days in aviation history, August 12, 1985, will forever remain etched in the memory as a day of deep sorrow and devastation.
This was the day the deadliest single-plane crash on record occurred, killing 520 people when the plane plunged into a mountainside in Japan.
On that fateful day, the Japan Air Lines flight was carrying 123 passengers on its scheduled route from Tokyo to Osaka.
The Boeing 747 jumbo jet suffered its most horrific fate when it suffered a complete hydraulic failure. What happened next was horrifying and extremely tragic.
The plane’s black box has been recovered from the horrific wreckage, revealing the pilot’s final tearful words before the plane burst into flames and crashed into the peaks of Mount Takamagahara in Japan’s Gunma Prefecture, according to reports. daily record.
The pilot’s painful last words
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The pilot’s last words were sad and scary (Image: Asahi Shimbun via Getty Images)
The most experienced aviator on Flight 123 was 49-year-old Captain Masami Takahama.
He also served as one of Japan Air Lines’ senior training captains and was supporting 39-year-old First Officer Yutaka Sasaki, who was in command of the flight that day. Experienced flight engineer Hiroshi Fukuda completed the cockpit crew.
Aviation journalist David Learmount, who has analyzed and reported on air disasters for nearly five decades, recalls how studying the CVR transcript of Flight 123 proved so tragic that it was the first time he had tears in his eyes.
Speaking on the 40th anniversary of the tragedy in 2025, David, consulting editor of FlightGlobal magazine, said: “I have lost count of the number of CVRS I have heard and transcripts from crashes I have read – and Japan Airlines 123 is the only plane that has made me cry.
“The transcript was so distressing that I couldn’t hear the CVR. The pilots were talking to each other in a state of deep distress because they didn’t know what was happening and what they could do.
“It wasn’t just fear. They wanted to save their airplane, save their lives and the lives of everyone aboard, and they didn’t know what to do.
“You never hear of a crisis like that.”
As far as the captain’s last words are concerned? They were: “Nose up, nose up… power”.
This was an extremely painful, last-ditch effort to save the lives of everyone on board, as the ground proximity alarm had gone off moments before the cockpit voice recorder went into effect and the plane crashed into a mountainside, killing almost everyone on board.
Japan Airlines (JAL) Flight 123 crash site. (Image: Corbis via Getty Images)
what happened on that fateful day
On the evening of August 12, 1985, while traveling from Tokyo to Osaka, a Boeing 747 jumbo jet suffered a catastrophic structural failure and began explosive disintegration just 12 minutes after takeoff.
During the first few minutes after departure, everything seemed absolutely normal, yet as the aircraft climbed, the air pressure difference between the interior of the cabin and the external atmosphere continued to increase, causing serious concern among the crew.
About 12 minutes after takeoff, the plane was rocked by a loud explosion. Oxygen masks collapsed in front of terrified passengers, and cabin altitude warnings began sounding, alerting pilots in the cockpit that the air inside the plane had become too thin to breathe.
The flight crew sent a distress call to air traffic control, but the worst was still to come.
Captain Masami Takahama did not know that the tremendous bang heard in the cockpit was caused by the rupture of the rear section of the aircraft, and that this catastrophic pressure increase had torn off a large portion of the aircraft’s tail, including the rudder, auxiliary power unit, and many other critical control systems.
As the hydraulic pressure rapidly failed, the aircraft suffered complete hydraulic failure and began to wobble rapidly up and down and side to side.
For 32 minutes, the crashed plane flew almost out of control, eventually crashing into the peaks of Mount Takamagahara near Mount Osutaka in Japan’s Gunma Prefecture, about 100 kilometers from Tokyo.
During the tragic incident, passengers wrote heart-wrenching messages to their loved ones, which were later recovered from the wreckage of the plane.
The plane’s right wing and outermost engine hit the top of the mountain and exploded, causing the plane to flip on its back and crash into the mountain at several hundred kilometers per hour, turning into a giant fireball.
All 15 crew members died in the catastrophic accident, including 505 of the 509 passengers on board. The four notable survivors – among them a 12-year-old girl whose parents and sister both lost their lives in the tragedy – were all seated towards the rear of the plane, where the forces of impact were significantly less severe than at the front, and extraordinary luck saved them from the same fate.
It is believed that about 20 to 50 passengers survived the initial impact, although they later died while awaiting rescue.
This devastating accident remains the deadliest single-aircraft accident on record, and also holds the solemn distinction of being the most destructive aviation incident in Japanese history.
According to Japan’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Commission (AAIC), which was assisted by the US National Transportation Safety Board in reaching the final conclusion, the cause of the accident was a structural failure resulting from poor repairs made by Boeing technicians following a tailstrike seven years earlier.
