Faulty motor suspected in UH-1 Huey mishap
A faulty rotor may have caused a US military helicopter to make an emergency landing on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa, a Japanese official said on 7 January.
The event was the latest in a series of accidents involving US military equipment that have fuelled local opposition to the basing of US forces on the island.
The USMC told Japanese authorities that the Bell Helicopter UH-1 Huey made the emergency landing on 6 January after its indicators suggested the possible problem.
A spokesperson at the Okinawa Defence Bureau of the Japanese defence ministry, said: ‘The US side has told us that while the helicopter was conducting a routine flight along the coast of Okinawa, an indicator came on to suggest that the main rotor was spinning too fast.
‘Then the crew performed the emergency landing on a beach on Ikei Island, just off the main island of Okinawa.’
None of the four crew members were injured. Teams of US service members disassembled the helicopter on the beach on 7 January.
In December 2017, a window from a US military helicopter fell onto a school sports ground near the Futenma Marine air base in Okinawa, but no one was injured. Two months prior to this event, another US military aircraft burst into flames after landing in an empty field on the island.
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