The U.S. Air Force officially concluded on Tuesday that all eight U.S. Airmen who went down with a CV-22B Osprey tiltrotor aircraft off the coast of Japan on Nov. 29 are deceased.
Various U.S. military units had conducted exhaustive search and rescue efforts off the coast of Yakushima Island for nearly a week after the aircraft went down and have thus far located the remains of six of the eight Airmen. On Tuesday, the Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) concluded that the final two missing Airmen were most likely also deceased. The command announced their search and rescue efforts had officially transitioned into a recovery operation to locate and retrieve the remains of the remaining Airmen.
