The coastguard of Japan reported that a US military Osprey aircraft crashed into the sea on Wednesday with eight people on board.
The aircraft went down near Yakushima Island, south of Kyushu at 2:47 pm local time and that
According to NHK, the Osprey was flying from the US base in Iwakuni to the base in Okinawa. The defence ministry sources told NHK that the aircraft belonged to the US Yokota air base in Tokyo and was a CV-22 Osprey model.
“We received information at 2:47 pm (0547 GMT) today that the US military’s Osprey crashed off Yakushima Island,” a spokeswoman told AFP.
The Osprey is a tilt-rotor aircraft that has been involved in several fatal accidents in the past. In August, three US marines died in a crash in Australia during a military exercise. Last year, four US marines were killed in Norway when their Osprey crashed during NATO training exercises.
In 2017, three marines died in another crash off Australia’s north coast. And in 2000, 19 marines lost their lives in a crash in Arizona.
This month, another US military helicopter crashed into the Mediterranean Sea during a training exercise, killing five service members. The US has deployed a carrier strike group to the region to prevent the escalation of the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
There have also been other incidents involving US military aircraft in recent years, such as the crash of an F-35 stealth warplane in South Carolina in September, with the pilot ejecting safely. In April, two helicopters collided in Alaska, killing three US soldiers.
And in March, nine soldiers died in a helicopter crash in Kentucky during a nighttime training mission.
