TOKYO — Japan plans to suspend its own Osprey flights after a U.S. Air Force Osprey based in Japan crashed in the waters off its southern coast during a training mission, reports said Thursday.
Kyodo’s new agency says a senior Defense Ministry official, Taro Yamato, told a parliamentary hearing that Japan plans to temporarily suspend osprey flights.
There were no other immediate details.
A U.S. Air Force Osprey stationed in Japan crashed off the country’s southern coast on Wednesday during a training mission, killing at least one of the eight crew members.
The cause of the crash and the status of the seven others on board were not immediately known, Japan Coast Guard spokesman Kazuo Ogawa said. The Coast Guard planned to search all night.
The Osprey is a hybrid aircraft that takes off and lands like a helicopter, but can rotate its propellers forward during flight and fly much faster like an airplane.
Ospreys have had a number of crashes, including in Japan, where they are used on US and Japanese military bases. In Okinawa, where about half of the 50,000 U.S. troops are stationed, Gov. Denny Tamaki told reporters Wednesday that he would ask the U.S. military to suspend all Osprey flights in Japan.
Ogawa said the coast guard received a distress call Wednesday afternoon from a fishing boat near the crash site near Yakushima, an island south of Kagoshima on the southern main island of Kyushu.
Coast Guard aircraft and patrol boats found a male crew member, who was later pronounced dead by a doctor, Ogawa said. They also found debris believed to be from the plane and an empty inflatable life raft about 1 kilometer (0.6 mi) off the east coast of Yakushima, he said.
The Coast Guard said it planned to search through the night.
Japanese Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said the Osprey disappeared from radar a few minutes before the coast guard received the distress call. The plane requested an emergency landing at Yakushima airport about five minutes before it disappeared from radar, public television channel NHK and other news media reported.
NHK quoted a Yakushima resident as saying he saw the plane upside down, with fire coming from one of the engines, and then an explosion before it fell into the sea.
The US Air Force Special Operations Command said in a statement that the CV-22B Osprey came from Yokota Air Base and was assigned to the 353rd Special Operations Wing.
Ogawa said the plane took off from the US Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni in Yamaguchi Prefecture and crashed en route to Kadena Air Base on Okinawa.
Japan’s Vice Defense Minister Hiroyuki Miyazawa said it had attempted an emergency landing at sea and quoted the US military as saying the pilot had “done everything possible until the last moment.”
Yokota Air Base is home to the United States Armed Forces Japan and the Fifth Air Force. Six CV-22 Ospreys have been deployed to Yokota, including the one that crashed.
While the U.S. Marine Corps operates most of the Ospreys in Japan, the Air Force has deployed some there as well.
Last year, Air Force Special Operations Command ordered a temporary shutdown of the Osprey fleet after successive safety incidents in which the Osprey clutch slipped, causing an uneven distribution of power to Osprey’s rotors.
The Marine Corps and Navy have reported similar clutch slippage, and each service has worked to address the problem in their aircraft, but a clutch failure was also cited in a fatal 2022 U.S. Marine Corps Osprey crash that killed five people were killed.
According to the investigation into that crash, “double hard clutch” led to engine failure.
In addition, in August, a U.S. Marine Corps Osprey carrying 23 Marines crashed on an island in northern Australia, killing three Marines and seriously injuring at least five others who were on board during a multinational training exercise.
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Copp reported from Washington.
