DISASTERS: The Worst Ever

There was a festive air about the 155 passengers as they boarded All Nippon Airways’ Flight 58 at Chitose Airport. Most were from the sleepy town of Fuji in central Japan, members of a society of war-bereaved families who had just toured the island of Hokkaido. Half an hour later, cruising at 28,000 ft., the pilot of the Boeing 727 found himself closing in on an F-86 Sabre jet. He had time only to shout a Mayday message before his plane and the jet collided. The airliner disintegrated, showering debris for miles around and killing all 162 passengers and crew. It was the largest number of people ever to die in a single air disaster.*

The sole survivor was the Sabre-jet pilot, Sergeant Yoshimi Ichikawa, 22. A trainee with only 21 hours’ flying time on the F-86, he and his instructor, who was in a second jet, had been practicing formation turns. Neither Sabre jet had radar, and it was only at the last second that Ichikawa’s instructor told him to climb and turn. Ichikawa recalledlater: “I saw a civilian plane approach from the rear and felt a jolt in my tail.” The young pilot was able to bail out safely. Both he and his instructor were being held by police on possible involuntary homicide charges.

The disaster underscores the problem of crowded skies. Near-collisions have risen to an estimated 200 per year in Japan and 600 in the U.S. Ichikawa’s instructor, Captain Tamotsu Kuma, said that “with civilian jets flying upstairs all the time and civilian propeller planes downstairs,” it was almost inevitable that military aircraft would continue to stumble into commercial air lanes.

*The worst previous disaster occurred in Venezuela in 1969, when 155 died.