The United States military has concluded that pilot error led one of its Ospreys to ditch off Okinawa Prefecture last December and denied that mechanical problems had anything to do with the accident, the Japanese government said Monday.
The finding was part of a final report released after a series of accidents involving the tilt-rotor MV-22 in Japan and abroad that stirred safety concerns in Okinawa, which hosts the bulk of U.S. military facilities in Japan.
In its final report on the Dec. 13 accident, the first major accident involving the aircraft in Japan, the U.S. military said, "There were no indications that a mechanical malfunction or maintenance malpractice were contributing factors to this mishap."