American military aircraft with 11 on board crashes

TOKYO: A US Navy aircraft carrying 11 crew members and passengers crashed yesterday southeast of Okinawa, Japan, the fifth accident this year for the 7th Fleet.

According to a statement from the fleet, the aircraft was on its way to the USS Ronald Reagan, an aircraft carrier operating in the Philippine Sea.

NHK, Japan’s public broadcaster, reported that eight people had been rescued and that a search was continuing for the remaining three. No information about the condition of the survivors was released.

According to NHK, the aircraft was a C-2 propeller plane often used to carry supplies and passengers to and from aircraft carriers. The Ronald Reagan is engaged in a joint exercise with Japan’s navy, known as the Maritime Self Defence Forces, NHK said.

Speaking to reporters, Itsunori Onodera, Japan’s defence minister, said a US source had indicated that the aircraft might have had engine trouble.

The accident comes three months after a US naval destroyer, the USS McCain, collided with an oil tanker off the coast of Singapore, leaving 10 dead. That episode came just two months after a collision between another naval destroyer, the Fitzgerald, and a Philippine merchant vessel off the coast of Japan. Seven people on the Fitzgerald were killed.

The Navy relieved Vice Adm Joseph P Aucoin, the head of the 7th Fleet, of his command in August.

Based in Yokosuka, Japan, the 7th Fleet is the Navy’s biggest and busiest, with 20,000 sailors and 50 to 70 vessels.

In reports released this month, the Navy’s top officer said the two destroyer collisions were “avoidable” and had resulted from basic navigational errors.

Yesterday’s accident followed a car crash on Okinawa in which a US Marine driving a military truck collided with another driver, killing him.