Five bodies were found Monday in the wreckage of a U.S. Army Osprey plane that crashed into the sea off the coast of southwestern Japan on Nov. 29, the U.S. Air Force said.
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“Today, the joint Japanese and American (rescue) teams … achieved a breakthrough when their surface ships and diving teams were able to locate these (human) remains along with the main body of the aircraft wreckage,” the US Air Force said in a statement.
“Diving teams were able to confirm the presence of five additional crew members of the eight people originally involved in the accident,” the same source said.
“Currently, two of the five crew members located today have been successfully recovered by teams on site. “Joint efforts are underway to rescue the remaining crew members from the rubble,” the US Air Force said.
On the same day of the accident, the body of a single crew member of the Osprey, an aircraft that can take off and land vertically like a helicopter and fly like an airplane, was discovered. The US Air Force identified it as 24-year-old Sergeant Jacob Galliher, while the identities of the five other people whose bodies were found on Monday have not yet been released.
The search has continued unabated since the plane crashed at sea last Wednesday near the Japanese island of Yakushima during a training mission with eight people on board.
The causes of the tragedy remain unknown.
An emergency management official told AFP on Wednesday that shortly before the plane disappeared, local police “received a report that an Osprey was spewing flames from its left engine.”
Reliability in the debate
A fisherwoman told Japanese television station NHK that she saw the plane plunge into the sea, spewing a huge column of water.
The reliability of ospreys has long been controversial due to numerous fatal accidents.
At the end of August, three US Marines died in the accident involving an aircraft of this type in northern Australia, and in 2022 four more died in Norway when their Osprey crashed during training exercises. NATO.
An American ship of the same type also crashed at sea in 2017, killing three people. And in April 2000, 19 Marines were killed when an Osprey crashed in Arizona, in the southwestern United States.
The U.S. military has about 54,000 troops stationed in Japan, most of them in the southern archipelago of Okinawa.
There have been various incidents and accidents involving US military aircraft in Japan in the past, including those involving ospreys, which were viewed negatively by the Japanese population.
Japan has suspended flights of its own Ospreys since Wednesday’s accident and asked the U.S. military to do the same on Japanese territory as a precaution.