A US Osprey military aircraft yesterday crashed off a Japanese island, killing one crew member and leaving five unaccounted for, the Japan Coast Guard said, in the latest incident involving the tilt-rotor aircraft.
One unconscious person had been found in the sea near the scene of the crash off the island of Yakushima, but was later “confirmed dead in hospital,” the coast guard said in a statement.
It also revised downward an earlier statement to say that six crew had been on board instead of eight.
Photo: EPA-EFE / handout / 10th Regional Japan Coast Guard Headquarters
An emergency management official in the Kagoshima region where the crash took place said that police had received information that the aircraft had been “spewing fire from a left engine.”
The US military in Japan, where it has about 54,000 personnel, was not immediately available for comment.
The coast guard said it has mobilized patrol ships and aircraft around Yakushima, which lies south of Japan’s southernmost main island of Kyushu.
Japanese public broadcaster NHK reported that the Osprey was on its way from the Iwakuni US base near Hiroshima in the Yamaguchi region, to the Kadena Air Base further south in Okinawa.
NHK also cited a defense ministry source as saying that the aircraft was a CV-22 Osprey belonging to the US Yokota Air Base in Tokyo.
Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said that the government was “aware of information that the US military’s Osprey fell out of radar” contact near Yakushima.
“The government is confirming the extent of damage and will prioritize saving human lives,” Matsuno told reporters.
The Osprey, developed by Bell Helicopters and Boeing and which can operate like a helicopter or a fixed-wing plane, has been at the center of a string of fatal crashes over the years.
In August, a crash in northern Australia killed three US Marines among the 23 on board.
The Boeing MV-22B Osprey crashed on Melville Island, north of Darwin during a military exercise for locally based troops. At the time the cause was unclear.
Four US Marines were killed in Norway last year when their MV-22B Osprey aircraft went down during NATO training exercises.
Three US Marines were killed in 2017 when an Osprey crashed after clipping the back of a transport ship while trying to land at sea off Australia’s north coast.
In 2016, an MV-22 Osprey crash-landed off Okinawa, prompting the US Marines to temporarily ground the aircraft in Japan after the accident sparked anger among locals.
Nineteen US Marines died in 2000 when their Osprey crashed during drills in Arizona.
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