What happened
On the afternoon of Thursday, June 18, 1953, a United States Air Force Douglas C-124 Globemaster II aircraft departed from Tachikawa Air Base in Japan. Shortly after liftoff, the heavy transport plane encountered catastrophic failure. The aircraft crashed just three minutes into its flight path.
The impact and subsequent destruction of the airframe resulted in total loss of life for everyone on board. All 129 people aboard the aircraft perished in the incident. At the time of the event, this tragedy held the record as the deadliest accident in aviation history.
Investigation
Details regarding the specific technical or procedural findings of the official investigation are not provided in the source material. However, the sheer scale of the loss immediately established the event as a significant milestone in aviation safety records due to the unprecedented number of fatalities.