O The device, which crashed on Wednesday near the island of Yakushima during a training mission, had eight crew members on board, one of whom was found dead on the same day.
“So far, there are no new leads on the missing people,” the coast guard said in a statement today, stating plans to organize dives, in addition to sea and air searches.
In particular, they should explore areas where searches using sonar returned “echoes different from those of the seabed”, according to the statement.
On Thursday, divers had already examined objects detected by sonar at a depth of around 30 meters, but which turned out to be rocks.
Photographs of the area taken after the accident reveal an apparent overturned yellow lifeboat and other debris, including what may be part of a propeller.
On Wednesday, an emergency management official told the France-Presse news agency that, shortly before the aircraft disappeared, local police had been informed about “an Osprey shooting flames from the left engine”.
A fisherman told public television channel NHK that she saw the plane crash into the sea, sending a column of water 100 meters high.
The reliability of the Osprey, equipped with tilting rotors that allow it to take off and land vertically like a helicopter and fly like an airplane, has long been the subject of debate due to numerous fatal accidents.
In late August, three US Marines died when an Osprey crashed in northern Australia. In 2022, four others died in Norway in another accident, during NATO exercises.
A US plane of the same type also crashed into the sea in 2017, killing three people. And, in April 2000, 19 marines died when one of these devices crashed in Arizona, in the southwest of the United States.
The US military has about 54,000 troops in Japan, most of whom are based in the southern Okinawa archipelago.
In the past, there were several episodes with US army planes in Japan, including Ospreys, which were frowned upon by the Japanese population.
On Thursday, Japan indicated that it had asked Washington to suspend the flights of these military planes over Japanese territory.
Read Also: Japan decides to suspend military planes after US aircraft crash
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Source: https://www.noticiasaominuto.com/mundo/2452687/japao-faz-busca-submarina-por-destrocos-de-aeronave-dos-eua
