US military aircraft crashes into ocean off Japan

A US Osprey military aircraft with eight people on board crashed on Wednesday off the coast of Japan, the coastguard said.

The aircraft has something of a troubled history, with several fatal crashes over the years.

What we know so far

Officials had received an emergency call from a fishing boat near the crash site. It was not immediately clear which US base the Osprey belonged to, although it was believed to be heading from the Iwakuni US base in the Yamaguchi region to the Kadena base in Okinawa.

Details about what happened to the aircraft were not immediately known, the coastguard said.

"We received information at 2:47 p.m. (0547 GMT/UTC) today that the US military's Osprey crashed off Yakushima Island," a spokeswoman told the AFP news agency.

The Osprey is a tiltrotor aircraft that combines the vertical takeoff, hovering and landing capabilities of a helicopter with the long-range, fuel efficiency and speed characteristics of a turboprop aircraft.

It has been deployed in transportation and medical evacuation operations over Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Kuwait.

Yakushima lies south of Japan's southernmost main island Kyushu.

The aircraft has something of a troubled history, with several fatal crashes over the years.

Another Osprey crashed in northern Australia in August during a military exercise for locally based troops. Three US marines among 23 on board died in that incident on Melville Island, north of Darwin.

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

Three Marines died in 2017 when an Osprey clipped the back of a transport ship and crashed while trying to land at sea off Australia's north coast.

Another 19 Marines died in 2000 when their Osprey crashed during exercises in Arizona.