Japan suspends its own Osprey flights after deadly US crash, asks US military ground aircraft following latest accident

A senior Defense Ministry official, Taro Yamato, told a parliamentary hearing that Japan plans to suspend flights of Ospreys for the time being. Ministry officials said a planned training flight Thursday at the Metabaru army camp in the Saga prefecture in southern Japan was cancelled as part of a plan to ground all 14 Japanese-owned Ospreys deployed at Japan’s Ground Self-Defense Force bases.

The US Osprey crashed on Wednesday off Japan’s southern coast, 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.

The coastguard, as well as Japanese troops searched through the night, and on Thursday, the coastguard started using sonar to search underwater for the broken aircraft that might have sunk to the sea bottom.

The Osprey is a hybrid aircraft that takes off and lands like a helicopter but can rotate its propellers forward and cruise much faster like an aeroplane during flight.

Ospreys have had a number of crashes, including in Japan, where they are used at US and Japanese military bases. In Okinawa, where about half of the 50,000 American troops are based, Governor Denny Tamaki had said he would ask the US military to suspend all Osprey flights in Japan.

US military aircraft crashes off Japan, killing at least 1

Japanese coastguard spokesperson Kazuo Ogawa said the coastguard received an emergency call on Wednesday afternoon from a fishing boat near the crash site off Yakushima, an island south of Kagoshima on the southern main island of Kyushu.

Coastguard aircraft and patrol boats found one male crew member, who was later pronounced dead by a doctor, Ogawa said. They also found debris believed to be from the aircraft and an empty inflatable life raft about 1 kilometre (0.6 miles) off the eastern coast of Yakushima, he said.

Matsuno said on Wednesday the Osprey disappeared from radar a few minutes before the coastguard received the emergency call. The aircraft requested an emergency landing at the Yakushima airport about five minutes before it was lost from radar, NHK public television and other news outlets reported.

NHK quoted a Yakushima resident as saying he saw the aircraft turned upside down, with fire coming from one of its engines, and then an explosion before it fell to the sea.

Defence Ministry officials on Thursday refused to confirm the sequence of events or witness account, citing discussions with the US side.

US Air Force Special Operations Command said the CV-22B Osprey was from Yokota Air Base and assigned to the 353rd Special Operations Wing.

Ogawa said the aircraft had departed from the US Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni in Yamaguchi prefecture and crashed on its way to Kadena Air Base on Okinawa.

Yokota airbase is home to US Forces Japan and the Fifth Air Force. Six CV-22 Ospreys have been deployed at Yokota, including the one that crashed.

3 US marines dead on Australia island after plane crash during war drills

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 US Marine Corps Osprey crash that killed five.

According to the investigation of that crash, “dual hard clutch engagement” led to engine failure.

Separately, a US 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 on board during a multinational training exercise.