TOKYO – A U.S. military plane with eight people on board crashed into the sea off western Japan on Wednesday, with multiple media outlets reporting that one crew member had died and the status of at least two of them taken off the plane. water was not clear.
Japan’s coast guard said what appeared to be debris from the tiltrotor V-22 Osprey and an “unresponsive” person had been found about 3 kilometers off the island of Yakushima.
Fishing boats in the area found three people in the surrounding waters, a representative of a local fishing cooperative said, adding that their condition was unknown.
A wreck believed to belong to the U.S. military aircraft MV-22 Osprey crashed into the sea off Yakushima Island in Japan on November 29, 2023. via REUTERS
Another Osprey landed safely at the island’s airport on Wednesday afternoon around the time of the crash, a local government spokesman said.
US forces in the region were still gathering information, a spokesman said.
The United States, which pledged to defend Japan after its defeat in World War II, has about 54,000 American troops in the country, many of them in the strategically important southern island chain, amid growing military assertiveness. China in the South China Sea.
A Japanese coast guard ship conducts a search and rescue operation around the site where a U.S. Osprey military plane is believed to have crashed into the sea off the island of Yakushima on Nov. 29, 2023. AP
The crash occurred shortly before 3 p.m. and witnesses said the plane’s left engine appeared to be on fire as it descended, media reported.
Japan, which also operates Osprey planes, said Wednesday it had no plans to ground the plane but had asked the U.S. military to investigate the crash.
Jointly developed by Boeing and Bell Helicopter, the Osprey can fly as a helicopter and as a fixed-wing aircraft and is operated by the US Marines and Navy and the Japanese Self-Defense Forces.
A coast guard spokesman said it had deployed patrol boats and aircraft to the scene off the Japanese island of Yakushima, but had no further details about the incident, including the condition of the people on board. LightRocket via Getty Images An aviation petty officer (below) signals the pilots of the MV-22 Osprey assault support aircraft, assigned to the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, as it approaches to land on the deck of flight of the Wasp-class amphibious assault ship. USS Kearsarge (LHD 3) on June 7, 2022. AFP via Getty Images
The Osprey’s deployment in Japan has been controversial, with critics saying it is accident-prone. The US military and Japan say she is safe.
In August, a US Osprey crashed off the coast of northern Australia while transporting troops during a routine military exercise, killing three US Marines.
Another crashed into the ocean off the southern Japanese island of Okinawa in December 2016, prompting a temporary military grounding of the plane by the United States.
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Source: vtt.edu.vn