A U.S. Air Force Osprey based in Japan crashed during a training assignment Wednesday off of the country’s southern coast, killing at least one of the crew members, a Japanese coast guard said.
The cause of the crash and the status of the seven others on board were not immediately known, Japanese coast guard spokesperson Kazuo Ogawa said.
The Osprey is a hybrid aircraft that takes off and lands like a helicopter, but during flight, it can rotate its propellers forward and cruise much faster like an airplane.
Ospreys have had several accidents in the past, including in Japan, where they are deployed at U.S. and Japanese military bases. In Okinawa, where about half of the 50,000 American troops are based, 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 an emergency call Wednesday afternoon from a fishing boat near the crash site off Yakushima, an island south of Kagoshima on the southern main island of Kyushu.
Coast guard aircraft and patrol boats found one male crew member, who was later pronounced dead by a doctor at a nearby port, Ogawa said. They also found gray debris believed to be from the aircraft and an empty inflatable life raft in an area about 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) off the eastern coast of Yakushima, he said.
Last year, Air Force Special Operations Command ordered a temporary stand-down of its Osprey fleet following back-to-back safety incidents where the Osprey clutch slipped, causing an uneven distribution of power to Osprey’s rotors.
The Marine Corps and Navy have reported similar clutch slips, and each service has worked to address the issue in their aircraft, however, clutch failure was also cited in a 2022 fatal U.S. Marine Corps Osprey crash that killed five.
According to the investigation of that crash, “dual hard clutch engagement” led to engine failure.
Separately, a U.S. Marine Corps Osprey with 23 Marines aboard crashed on a northern Australian island in August, killing three Marines and critically injuring at least five others who were onboard during a multinational training exercise.
