This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Eight warships have joined a US aircraft carrier and scores of helicopters and planes to search for three American sailors who went missing after their plane crashed in the Philippine Sea.

A US navy transport plane carrying 11 people crashed in the Philippine Sea south of Japan on Wednesday as it flew to the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan, the US Seventh Fleet said.

US navy to relieve 7th Fleet commander of duty after series of collisions Read more

It is the fifth accident this year for the fleet.

Eight people were rescued, with three others missing, it said, adding that all of the rescued personnel were transferred to the carrier for medical evaluation and were in good condition.

The search carried on through Wednesday night and into Thursday morning.

“Searching through the night, several ships and aircraft covered more than 320 nautical miles (600 kilometres) as of this morning,” the US Navy said in a statement on Thursday.





The plane was conducting a routine transport flight carrying passengers and cargo from Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni to the carrier, which was operating in the Philippine Sea as part of an exercise with Japanese forces, it said.

Donald Trump was briefed on the crash at his Mar-a-Lago retreat in Florida, where he is spending the US Thanksgiving holiday, said a White House spokeswoman, Lindsay Walters.

“The @USNavy is conducting search and rescue following aircraft crash. We are monitoring the situation. Prayers for all involved,” Trump wrote in a Twitter post.

This is the fifth incident this year involving the US navy’s Seventh Fleet, which is based in Japan and patrols the Pacific and Indian oceans.

In January, the guided missile ship USS Antietam ran aground in Tokyo Bay. In May, the cruiser USS Lake Champlain collided with a South Korean fishing vessel, followed just a month later by the USS Fitzgerald being hit by a civilian freighter at the entrance to a busy Japanese shipping lane, killing seven sailors.

Then in August, the destroyer USS John McCain collided with an oil tanker near Singapore, leaving 10 sailors dead and five injured.

The series of incidents involving the fleet raised fears that allies in the region would be nervous about the reliability of the US navy and revealed concerns that the service is stretched too thinly on constant deployments across a vast area.

In the latest incident, the Japanese minister of defence, Itsunori Onodera, told reporters the US navy informed him that the crash may have been a result of engine trouble.

The propeller-powered transport plane, a C-2 Greyhound, carries personnel, mail and other cargo from mainland bases to carriers operating at sea.

C-2 aircraft have been in operation for more than five decades and are due to be replaced by long-range tilt-rotor Osprey aircraft.

Reuters contributed to this report