An American Osprey military plane crashes off the coast of Japan with 8 people on board; The official says at least one person is dead

A US military Osprey plane crashed into the ocean on Wednesday near the small southern Japanese island of Yakushima with eight people on board, killing at least one crew member, a US defense official confirmed to CBS News. A Japanese Coast Guard official told CBS News that one crew member had been recovered dead and that search operations were continuing into the night for the others from the Osprey.

The official told CBS News that two helicopters and six boats participated in the search. The US Air Force Special Operations Command said in a statement that the Osprey plane was conducting a routine training mission.

The French news agency had previously quoted Coast Guard spokesman Kazuo Ogawa as saying that an emergency call came from a fishing boat reporting the accident. He said there were eight people aboard the Osprey, a number the Coast Guard later revised to six before the US defense official said eight pilots were on board.

Japanese national broadcaster NHK broadcast a video from a helicopter showing a Coast Guard vessel at the site with an orange inflatable life raft seen on the water, but no one inside.

Japanese Broadcasting Corporation (NHK) said that an eyewitness reported seeing the plane’s left engine burning before it crashed about 600 miles southwest of Tokyo, off the eastern coast of Yakushima.

The Kagoshima regional government later said the Osprey was flying alongside another plane of the same type and landed safely on Yakushima island.

Japan’s Kyodo News agency quoted Coast Guard officials as saying that the first emergency call came in at around 2:45 p.m. local time (12:45 a.m. Eastern time), and said the Japanese Ministry of Defense reported the Osprey had been shot down from radar screens about five minutes before. that.

The Osprey can take off and land vertically like a helicopter, but then changes the angle of its dual rotors to fly like a turboprop aircraft once in flight.

Japanese government It was approved last year A new five-year host nation support budget of $8.6 billion will cover the cost of hosting US forces in the country, reflecting a growing focus on integration between the two countries’ forces and an emphasis on joint response and deterrence amid growing threats from China. , north korea And Russia.

The Air Force Special Operations Command said the Osprey plane involved in the incident was assigned to Yokota Air Base outside Tokyo. NHK reported that the plane departed on Wednesday from a smaller US air base in Iwakuni bound for Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, which is located in the same island chain as the small island of Yakushima. The small island is located south of Kagoshima Prefecture, on the main island of Kyushu in southern Japan.

The Kadena Air Base of the US Army is the most important and largest American base in the region.

Recent years have witnessed a series of fatal crashes of American Osprey aircraft, the most recent of which was a plane that went down during a multinational training exercise on an Australian island in August. Three US Marines were killed Eight others were left in hospital. All five US Marines aboard another Osprey He died last summer When the plane crashed in the California desert.

An Osprey plane crashed in shallow waters off the Japanese island of Okinawa in 2016, but all US Marines aboard survived.

Elizabeth Palmer and Lucy Kraft of CBS News in Tokyo and Eleanor Watson of the Pentagon contributed to this report.