A U.S. military Osprey aircraft crashed into the ocean near Yakushima Island in Japan with eight personnel onboard Wednesday, the local coast guard said.
A caller reported that an Osprey aircraft of unknown affiliation had crashed at around 2:47 p.m. local time on Nov. 29, a spokesperson for the regional coast guard in Kagoshima Prefecture told NBC News. The plane was later identified as belonging to the U.S. military and having eight people on board.
The coast guard said it had found wreckage-like debris and an overturned life raft. Searches are ongoing.
At 4:41 p.m., a rescue ship found one person at sea near the accident site.
“The person in question was unconscious and was not breathing. The person was transported to the Anbo Port while performing CPR,” the coast guard said in a statement.
Official updates on other personnel have not been provided.
Japanese public broadcaster NHK cited a witness who said that they saw fire coming from the aircraft as it went down. CNBC has not independently verified the report.
Yakushima Island is located off Japan’s southern coast. Local weather reports suggest no adverse conditions at the time of the crash.
The Osprey aircraft has been involved in a spate of recent incident. Three U.S. Marines died in August when a MV-22B Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft crashed off the coast of northern Australia, with 23 on board. Previously, Five marines perished in a V-22 Osprey crash in California in August 2022, which was ruled as a mechanical failure. In March the same year, four U.S. personnel were killed in a V-22B Osprey crash in northern Norway during NATO training exercises.
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