The bodies of four U.S. Marines who were killed in Norway during a NATO training exercise were retrieved from the accident site, the Norwegian Armed Forces said on Sunday.
The Marines had been taking part in a long-planned exercise called Cold Response on Friday when their MV-22B Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft crashed south of Bodo, in the northern county of Nordland, the Royal Norwegian Air Force said in a statement.
The update, published Sunday evening on the Norwegian military’s website, said that the Norwegian 330 Squadron, a search and rescue unit, deployed a Sea King helicopter to the crash site. The remains will be kept in Bodo until transported to the United States.
Organized regularly by Norway, the Cold Response exercise is intended to teach troops survival skills in extreme weather conditions in the Arctic. NATO said in a statement that Cold Response 2022 was not linked to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The Marines were reported missing on Friday evening after their Osprey did not land by 6 p.m. local time. The Norwegian police are investigating, but information about the cause of the crash has yet to be released.
“I feared the worst, but hoped for a long time for better news,” the Norwegian chief of defense, Gen. Eirik Kristoffersen, said in a statement on Saturday.
The crew members were assigned to II Marine Expeditionary Force. The four were identified Sunday as Capt. Matthew J. Tomkiewicz of Fort Wayne, Ind., Capt. Ross A. Reynolds of Leominster, Mass., Sgt. James W. Speedy of Cambridge, Ohio, and Cpl. Jacob M. Moore of Catlettsburg, Ky.
The Joint Rescue Coordination Center in Norway began a search-and-rescue operation after the Osprey failed to return Friday evening. Later on, a crash site was spotted from the air, south of Bodo.
Poor weather conditions made it impossible for rescue services to initially reach the site from the air, but police and rescue crews eventually made their way into the area by foot and snowmobile.
This year’s Cold Response exercises began in March and brought together about 30,000 troops from more than 27 countries across Europe and North America.
Norway’s prime minister, Jonas Gahr Store, posted a message of condolence on Twitter on Saturday morning.
“It is with great sadness we have received the message that four American soldiers died in a plane crash last night,” he wrote, adding, “Our deepest sympathies go to the soldiers’ families, relatives and fellow soldiers in their unit.”
Crashes during military training exercises are not common, but not unheard of. In February, four contractors were killed when a helicopter crashed at a U.S. naval facility during a training mission in Hawaii, and in 2020, an Air Force pilot died when his fighter jet crashed during a training flight off the northeast coast of England.
John Ismay contributed reporting.
