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Marine KC-130 Aerial Tanker And F/A-18 Hornet Crash Off Japan

By JEFF SCHOGOL on December 5, 2018

A Marine Corps KC-130 aerial tanker and an F/A-18 Hornet have crashed off Japan, a defense official told Task & Purpose on Wednesday.

“Search and rescue operations continue for U.S. Marine aircraft that were involved in a mishap off of the coast of Japan around 2:00 a.m. Dec. 6.,” a Marine Corps news release said.

“The aircraft involved in the mishap had launched from Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni and were conducting regularly scheduled training when the mishap occurred. Japanese search and rescue aircraft immediately responded to aid in recovery.”

A total of seven personnel were believed to be on board the two aircraft, according to ABC News’ Elizabeth McLaughlin.

No further information was yet known on exactly how many service members were aboard the two aircraft at the time or what their current status is.

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Originally posted by Dulltool17:


Refueling at night has to be amazingly risky business.

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Originally posted by A7drvr:
Yep; I flew the A-7E back during the Vietnam thingy. When we headed back to the ship after a mission we had 2 fun and game options: during day ops we would try to sneak up on the returning F-4s and make a few "turns" or we'd go plug the tankers and get as many prctice plugs as we could. At night we'd just plug the tankers until recovery time. The A-7 had long legs so we rarely had to actually take on fuel but seemed like we each had about 3 million practice plugs during the deployment.