Nov. 29 (UPI) — A U.S. military Osprey aircraft with 8 soldiers on board crashed off the coast of Japan early Wednesday. One crew member has been rescued, unconscious, officials said.
The Japanese Coast Guard said the Osprey crashed off the coast of Japan’s Yakushima Island in southern Kagoshima prefecture about 600 miles southwest of Tokyo.
Japanese broadcaster NHK said an eyewitness reported seeing the aircraft’s left engine on fire before it went down about at 2:47 p.m. local time, or 12:47 a.m. ET on Wednesday. The Japanese coast guard said the Osprey disappeared from its radar screen about five minutes before that.
The Japanese Coast guard said it dispatched a patrol boat and rescue aircraft to the site of the crash.
At 4 p.m. (2 a.m. ET) a rescue team including boats from the coast guard and a local rescue center found “wreckage-like debris” and an overturned life raft, the coast guard said.
This is the latest in a series of crashed involving the Osprey, which has a checkered past of mishaps and fatal crashes.
In August, three U.S. Marines were killed and several others were critically injured when an Osprey crashed during a training exercise in Australia.
Five U.S. Marines died when an MV-22B Osprey crashed during training exercises in the desert near Glamis, California in 2022, and four American soldiers were killed when an Osprey crashed during Nato training exercises in Norway that same year.
The Osprey is best known for its ability to take off and land vertically, like a helicopter but, due to its tilt rotor propeller engines, also capable of cruising at high speeds like a turboprop aircraft with conventional wings.
Its unique and flexible design has come under scrutiny and critics have speculated that the quirky nature of the Osprey may be largely responsible for the relatively high number of crashes involving it.
The Osprey has had a history of mechanical and operational problems since it was introduced in the 1980s.
