JAL Plane Rolled ‘All Over the Sky’ Before Crashing : ‘Black Boxes’ Found; Survivor Could ‘See Sky’

The Japan Air Lines jumbo jet that crashed this week rolled “all over the sky” after sections of its tail were ripped away, the airline said today.

Also today, police found the plane’s two “black box” flight recorders, and a survivor aboard the jet when it went down Monday said she “saw the sky” when part of the cabin ceiling blew out.

JAL spokesmen in Tokyo confirmed that airplane sections recovered by ships in Sagami Bay outside Tokyo were part of the vertical stabilizer and the vital lower rudder from the Boeing 747.

The account of Yumi Ochiai, 26, an off-duty JAL assistant purser who survived the wreck, indicates that a third section also tore off, taking part of the fuselage, officials said.

Brace Ripped Away

JAL maintenance manager Hiroaki Kono said it appeared that a brace called a “link,” which secures the tail to the fuselage, ripped away from the plane, but officials declined to say that was what caused the crash.

“We don’t know in what sequence the tail pieces were lost,” Kono said.

After losing the tail sections in Sagami Bay, the plane veered northward and flew more than 100 miles off course before it pitched out of control and slammed into a remote mountainside in flames.

Four passengers survived the crash and 520 died in the worst single-airplane disaster in aviation history. Ochiai suffered pelvic and arm fractures.

Officials said Ochiai was unsure at what point she saw the sky through a hole in the fuselage, but “by that time the plane was apparently rolling and veering all over the sky.”

Crash a Series of Jolts

According to JAL spokesman Geoffrey Tudor, Ochiai told officials that the crash was a series of “three jolts,” accompanied by a swirl of seats and cushions. She said the next thing she knew, a helicopter was flying overhead.

She said that there was no announcement from the cockpit before the crash but that a purser made an “emergency announcement” and a stewardess instructed the passengers to put on life jackets and assume a “crash position.”

She said from her hospital bed that she saw damage to the ceiling above a rear lavatory but did not know whether a fuselage door blew out before the crash of the Boeing 747 jumbo jet.

The pilot said the door had broken, and there was speculation that it might have come free of the plane and knocked off a large piece of the plane’s vertical tail fin, causing the pilot to lose control.

Door Found at Scene

Kono said today, however, that the door had been found at the crash site, apparently invalidating the theory that it had knocked off part of the tail.

Ochiai was sitting in the rear of the plane when it went down.

She told airline officials that oxygen masks dropped down and a “white cloud” swirled through the cabin just before the crash.

Airline officials suggested that the cloud was condensation from sudden pressure loss, but Kono said the noise and cloud indicated that the outer shell of the plane was breaking up.

He did not say how it might have broken.

By mid-afternoon, 109 bodies were delivered to a school gymnasium in Fujioka, about 25 miles from the crash site, where more than 1,700 relatives and friends brought in by JAL waited to identify them.

Slim Hope for Survivors

A police spokesman at Uenomura, command post for the recovery operation, said there was only the “remotest chance” of finding more survivors.

Searchers today found the plane’s two flight recorders, and maritime officials announced that two more pieces of aircraft debris--an air-conditioning duct and a plastic-and-metal fitting--had been found off the Japanese coast. The so-called “black boxes,” actually painted bright orange for visibility, keep track of cockpit conversations and flight data. They could help determine why the jetliner plowed into a mountaintop.

Yoshinubu Shibakawa, a spokesman for the Gumma prefecture (state) police, said the two recorders were found in a valley below the crash site. They were impounded by Transport Ministry officials, Shibakawa said.