U.S. Osprey crashes off southwestern Japan island, 1 confirmed dead

 A U.S. military Osprey aircraft carrying six people crashed in waters off Yakushima Island in southwestern Japan, with one suspected crewman confirmed dead, the Japan Coast Guard said Wednesday, Kyodo reports. 

The CV-22 tilt-rotor transport aircraft, which was assigned to the Yokota Air Base in western Tokyo, disappeared from radar at around 2:40 p.m., according to the Japanese Defense Ministry. The coast guard had initially said eight people were aboard the airplane but later corrected the number.

What appeared to be the wreckage of the aircraft and an empty lifeboat were also spotted in the area where the apparent crewman was found unresponsive.

The accident site is believed to be around 1 kilometer east of Yakushima Island in Kagoshima Prefecture, where the water depth is about 30 meters, and search and rescue efforts are continuing.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida indicated that his government will not immediately ask the U.S. military to ground its Ospreys or consider doing so for Ospreys used by the Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force.

"It is an issue we should think about after confirming what has actually happened," he told reporters.

The latest accident, however, is certain to rekindle concerns over the safety of Ospreys, especially among locals in the southern island prefecture of Okinawa that hosts the bulk of U.S. military facilities in Japan.

Ospreys, capable of taking off and landing like a helicopter but also cruising like a plane, have a track record of accidents and mishaps both in Japan and abroad.

MV-22s, the variant used by the U.S. Marine Corps, are deployed at Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Okinawa Prefecture, while the CV-22s, used by the U.S. Air Force, have operated from Yokota Air Base. Japan's GSDF also has a V-22 Osprey fleet.

Okinawa Gov. Denny Tamaki told reporters that his prefectural government would seek the flight suspension of U.S. Ospreys in Japan "until the cause of the accident is identified."

The U.S. military has explained to Japan that the Osprey involved in the accident made a forced landing at sea, senior vice defense minister Hiroyuki Miyazawa told reporters.

"Our top priority is to save lives," Japan's top government spokesman Hirokazu Matsuno told a press conference.

The coast guard initially received an emergency call about the crash around 2:45 p.m. According to the Kagoshima prefectural government, there have been reports that the Osprey's left engine caught fire as the aircraft fell.

The Osprey had planned to fly from the U.S. military base in Iwakuni in Yamaguchi Prefecture, western Japan, to the Kadena Air Base in Okinawa Prefecture, the coast guard said.

A separate Osprey believed to have been flying alongside the crashed aircraft landed at Yakushima Airport around 3:25 p.m., according to the Kagoshima prefectural government.

Following the incident, the GSDF halted a drill involving its Ospreys in Saga Prefecture in southwestern Japan.

According to the Japanese Defense Ministry, there have been no fatalities in past domestic accidents that involved the U.S. military's Ospreys.

In 2016, an MV-22 crash-landed off Okinawa, with two of the five crew members injured.