United States authorities have announced that they do not have any expectation to find three marines alive after a military aircraft Osprey V-22 crashed off the Queensland coast on Saturday. The military informed that the search mission for three missing US Marines was called off early Sunday.
The MV-22 Osprey involved in a ‘mishap’ at around 16:00 Australian Eastern Standard Time on Saturday along with twenty-six crew members on board. The Marine Corps were successful to rescue twenty-three out of 26 Marines.US military aircraft and boats scoured ocean waters off Australia searching without success for the three missing Marines. The families of the missing Marines have been notified, the military said.
The search was continued throughout the night but was called off Sunday morning. “Operations have now shifted to recovery efforts,” a statement from the III Marine Expeditionary Force (III MEF). The circumstances and the consequences of the mishap are currently under investigation.
The aircraft had been in Queensland as part of the Talisman Sabre joint training exercise between Australian and United States military forces, which ended on July 25.
The Osprey V-22 developed by Bell Helicopter and Boeing’s helicopter unit is a tilt-rotor aircraft that takes off and lands like a helicopter, but flies like an airplane. They have been involved in a series of high-profile crashes in recent years. In January, three US soldiers were injured in the “hard landing” of an Osprey in Yemen.
-cnn.com
