Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force helicopter swashplate seizure

The first known failure of the Reali-Slim swashplate bearing — a heavy-lift Navy helicopter crashes in the Sea of Japan, late 1980s. Spends years on the ocean floor, recovery too corroded to diagnose definitively. Sets up the U.S. failure to come.

But I don't want to get into all the physics of helicopters. What happened was: the Japanese Maritime Defense Forces — the Japanese Navy — by their constitution, the Japanese are not allowed to wage an offensive war anymore. We wrote the constitution for them in 1945. This is a big deal for the Japanese, they're very proud of the fact that they only have defense forces. So their military is called the Defense Forces.