The search for the wreckage of an American Osprey that crashed at sea in southwestern Japan on Wednesday has still yielded no results, the Japanese Coast Guard said Friday, as seven of the vessel’s crew remain missing.
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Intensive search operations took place again on Friday, including with divers, but as on the previous day, no traces of the wreck or the people who were on board could be found, according to a Coast Guard press release published late in the afternoon, according to Japanese Times.
Only one crew member’s body has been found so far, on the same day as the accident that occurred near the Japanese island of Yakushima while the Osprey was conducting a training mission.
Photos of the area taken after the accident showed an overturned yellow lifeboat floating on the surface and other debris, including one that may have been part of a propeller.
AFP
The causes of the accident are also still unknown. However, an emergency management official told AFP on Wednesday that local police “received a report that an Osprey was spewing flames from its left engine” shortly before the plane disappeared.
A fisherwoman told public broadcaster NHK that she saw the plane plunge into the sea, spewing a huge column of water.
Reliability in question
The reliability of the Osprey, which has tilting rotors that allow it to take off and land vertically like a helicopter and fly like an airplane, has long been controversial due to numerous fatal accidents.
At the end of August, three US Marines were killed in an Osprey crash in northern Australia. In 2022, four more died in Norway when their Osprey crashed during NATO exercises.
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, 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.
Pentagon deputy spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said in a statement Friday that the military unit affected by the accident “was no longer operating flights.”
However, it was not immediately clear how many aircraft would be affected by the suspension and for how long.
“All V-22 Ospreys in Japan can only be deployed after thorough safety and maintenance checks,” emphasized Ms. Singh. “The safety of our soldiers and the Japanese people is the United States’ top priority.”