CANBERRA, Australia — Eight U.S. Marines remained in a hospital within the Australian north coast metropolis of Darwin on Monday after they had been injured in a fiery crash of a tiltrotor plane that killed three of their colleagues on an island.
All 20 survivors had been flown from Melville Island 80 kilometers (50 miles) south to Darwin inside hours of the Marine V-22 Osprey crashing at 9:30 a.m. Sunday throughout a multinational coaching train, Northern Territory Chief Minister Natasha Fyles mentioned.
All had been taken to the Royal Darwin Hospital, and 12 had been discharged by Monday, she mentioned.
The primary 5 Marines to reach on the metropolis’s most important hospital had been critically injured and one underwent emergency surgical procedure.
Fyles mentioned she wouldn’t element the circumstances of eight who remained within the hospital out of respect for them and their households.
“It’s … a credit score to everybody concerned that we had been capable of get 20 sufferers from an especially distant location on an island into our tertiary hospital inside a matter of hours,” Fyles instructed reporters.
The Osprey that crashed was certainly one of two that flew from Darwin to Melville on Sunday as a part of Train Predators Run, which includes the militaries of the USA, Australia, Indonesia, the Philippines and East Timor.
All 23 Marines aboard the misplaced plane had been quickly primarily based in Darwin as a part of the Marine Corps’ annual troop rotation.
Round 150 U.S. Marines are at present primarily based in Darwin and as much as 2,500 rotate by means of the town yearly. They’re a part of a realignment of U.S. forces within the Asia-Pacific that’s broadly meant to face an more and more assertive China.
The our bodies of the three Marines remained on the crash web site, the place an exclusion zone could be maintained, Northern Territory Police Commissioner Michael Murphy mentioned.
The reason for the crash had but to be defined and investigators would stay on the web site for no less than 10 days, Murphy mentioned.
The Osprey, a hybrid plane that takes off and lands like a helicopter however throughout flight can tilt its propellers ahead and cruise a lot sooner like an airplane, crashed into tropical forest and burst into flame.
Earlier than Sunday, there had been 5 deadly crashes of Marine Ospreys since 2012, inflicting a complete of 16 deaths.
The newest was in June 2022, when 5 Marines died in a fiery crash in a distant a part of California east of San Diego. A crash investigation report final month discovered that the tragedy was attributable to a mechanical failure associated to a clutch.
There had been 16 related clutch issues with the Marine Ospreys in flight since 2012, the report discovered. However no issues have arisen since February when the Marine Corps started changing a chunk of apparatus on the plane, the report mentioned.
Emergency responders had been shocked the demise toll from Sunday’s crash was not greater.
“For a chopper that crashes and catches fireplace, to have 20 Marines which are surviving, I feel that’s an unbelievable final result,” Murphy mentioned.
Protection Minister Richard Marles was additionally greateful that the toll was not worse.
“It’s outstanding that in some ways, so many have survived,” Marles instructed 9 News tv. “This stays a really tragic incident and the lack of these lives are keenly felt,” Marles added.
U.S. Protection Secretary Lloyd Austin paid tribute to lifeless Marines.
“These Marines served our nation with braveness and delight, and my ideas and prayers are with their households at present, with the opposite troops who had been injured within the crash, and with the whole USMC household,” Austin tweeted.
The U.S. Embassy in Australia issued a press release providing condolences to the households and mates of the lifeless Marines and thanking Australian responders for his or her assist.
© Copyright 2023 Related Press. All rights reserved. This materials is probably not printed, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
