US military aircraft crashes in western Japan with eight on board

A US military Osprey aircraft carrying eight people has crashed into the sea off southern Japan, and the Japanese coast guard is heading to the site for search and rescue operations.

Details about what happened to the Osprey and to the people on board were not immediately known, coast guard spokesperson Kazuo Ogawa said on Wednesday.

The coast guard received an emergency call from a fishing boat near the crash site off Yakushima, an island south of Kagoshima on the southern main island of Kyushu, he said.

It was not immediately clear which US base the Osprey belonged to, but it was believed to be heading from Iwakuni to Okinawa.

Troubled history

The Osprey is a hybrid aircraft that takes off and lands like a helicopter, but during flight can rotate its propellers forward and cruise much faster like an airplane. Versions of the aircraft are flown by the US Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force.

The tilt-rotor Osprey aircraft has a troubled history, with a string of fatal crashes over the years.

In August, a crash in northern Australia killed three US marines among the 23 on board.

The Boeing MV-22B Osprey crashed on Melville Island, north of Darwin during a military exercise for locally based troops.

Eight other US Marines needed hospital treatment including one of them in intensive care.

Four US Marines were killed in Norway last year when their MV-22B Osprey aircraft went down during NATO training exercises.

Three Marines were killed in 2017 when an Osprey crashed after clipping the back of a transport ship while trying to land at sea off Australia's north coast.

And 19 Marines died in 2000 when their Osprey crashed during drills in Arizona.

This month five US service members were killed when a helicopter crashed into the Mediterranean during a training exercise.