The Bombing Of Philippine Airlines Flight 434
Ramzi Yousef knew that if his next operation were to be remotely successful, his makeshift bombs had to work to the extent he desired. After Abdul Hakim Murad’s test run, where he planted one of Yousef’s bombs underneath a seat at the Greenbelt Theatre in Manil. The next step would be to get past airline security and hastily craft the timing mechanism in the bathroom. He would purchase his ticket under a false alias, Armaldo Forlani, since he was still wanted for the 1993 WTC bombing.
Philippine Airlines Flight 434 was a flight from Ninoy Aquino International Airport, Pasay, Philippines, heading towards Narita International Airport, Tokyo, Japan. It did however have one stop over, in Cebu.{Philippines. The plane was a Boeing 747, which had 273 passengers on board. In the early morning hours of December 11,1994, Ramzi Yousef had boarded the flight, but only to the Cebu stopover. The plane departed from Manila at 5:35 a.m. While the airline was just reaching mid-flight, Yousef went to the lavatory. .It was in there he would construct the device which was hidden in his heel of his shoe which he had carved out, here he would retrieve the batteries, wiring, and spark source. None of these would be detected since security did not require checking shoes or the feet.
Yousef would also remove part of his watch’s timing mechanism. He set the timer for four hours later. After he carefully constructed the device, he would return to his seat, he would then ask a flight attendant if he could move to a better seat with a window view, he was granted this request, the seat 26K was where Yousef moved to. Yousef moved there and tucked the assembled bomb into the life vest pocket underneath.
When the stop over had landed, Yousef had deplaned and left to in the sea of people at the airport. Haruki Ikegami was heading back home in Tokyo and he had a long trip. He sat in his seat which he purchased a day prior, 26K. The plane took off at 8:38am while experiencing a short delay. At 11:43 a.m, 4 hours after the devices construction, the bomb placed at seat 26K had exploded. Ikegami was killed instantly, his lower half of his body had been sheared off completely leaving him just from the torso up. 10 other passengers nearby had been injured. The explosion had ripped a two foot hole in the cabin floor where Ikegami had been seated.
The explosion however did not totally compromise the aircraft, Yousef had miscalculated. Seat 26K was not underneath the fuel-tank, it was two seats away from it. Also Ikegami’s body had absorbed most of the blast force, tearing him apart in two. The airlines pilots and captain had remarkably steered the plane and forced its landing at Naha Airport, Okinawa Island under guard from a nearby USAF. The remaining passengers on board had managed to survive due to the experienced pilots handling of the situation.
However, this was a slight mistake from Yousef. On his way to concoct his greatest plan of all, Bojinka Plot. Where he would devise a plan to implement 12 casino timing bombs on all 12 flights from SE Asia to the United States and have them all exploded over the Pacific 10 minutes apart from each other. The plot would however be foiled, but the thought process lived on in his Yousef’s uncle’s mind…Khalid Shaykh Muhammad. Who would just a short while later embark on the planning using not bombs on airliners, but using the airliners as bombs themselves while crashing them into high valued American targets. Only this time, the plan was successful, even thou the operation required more hijacked flights….which were fortunately halted due to the grounding of all flights on that fateful September 11th day.
https://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/04/nyregion/plane-bombing-is-described-in-terror-trial.html
