CBS Evening News - 1985-08-12
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Read a transcript preview of “CBS Evening News - 1985-08-12” from malgent, uploaded on 2025-08-12.
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Language: English (YouTube automatic captions)
[0:01] Good evening. This is the CBS Evening
[0:03] News. I'm Charles Keraltt, sitting in
[0:05] tonight for Dan Rather. Japan Airlines
[0:08] had just begun its 1-hour flight from
[0:10] Tokyo to Osaka today when something went
[0:12] wrong. And then the crowded jet with 15
[0:15] crew members and 509 passengers, two of
[0:19] them Americans, crashed into a mountain
[0:21] more than a mile high. If all aboard are
[0:24] dead, this will be the worst air
[0:25] disaster involving one plane. Wyatt
[0:28] Andrews reports.
[0:31] For the 524 aboard this flight, death
[0:34] did not come without warning. It
[0:36] followed 30 minutes of terror. Japan
[0:38] Airlines Flight 123 crashed into the
[0:41] wilderness of Japan's central mountains
[0:43] after flying wildly up and down, out of
[0:45] control. There are no signs of
[0:47] survivors.
[0:49] I knew the plane was in trouble. He is
[0:51] saying it was swaying back and forth.
[0:53] Then it disappeared in a cloud. Why the
[0:57] plane crashed in the mountains is a
[0:59] mystery. 30 minutes before the crash,
[1:01] the pilot radioed to Tokyo, saying that
[1:03] he was having trouble with the right
[1:05] rear door, that he was losing cabin
[1:07] pressure, that he was returning to
[1:09] Tokyo. But instead of turning around,
[1:11] the plane headed north inland toward the
[1:14] mountains. Minutes before the crash,
[1:16] someone from the cockpit said, "We don't
[1:18] know where we are. Tell us where we are
[1:20] flying." He was spending his time
[1:22] struggling with the airplane, trying to
[1:25] find out exactly what was wrong with it
[1:26] and trying to find out if he could
[1:28] regain control of it. And that's why he
[1:30] didn't know where he was. The timing of
[1:33] the crash is part of this t