Eight people are presumed dead after a B-52 bomber crashed shortly after takeoff on Monday morning at a US air force base in California’s Mojave Desert, officials said.
“An Air Force B-52 Stratofortress carrying eight people on a routine test mission crashed today shortly after take-off at 11:20 a.m,” Edwards air force base said in a statement Monday afternoon. “Initial indications are that the crash was not survivable. “Emergency response personnel are on scene, and officials are working to account for all personnel.”
Officials said the crash is under investigation.
Aerial footage showed virtually nothing left of an aircraft. Black smoke rose from a large swath of charred desert at Edwards air force base near what appeared to be a runway, with emergency vehicles nearby. The military hasn’t said whether the bomber was armed.
The Boeing B-52 Stratofortress, typically crewed by five people, is a long-range bomber that entered service in 1955. Designed to carry both conventional and nuclear weapons, it has been used in conflicts ranging from the Vietnam war to recent operations in the Middle East.
The airfield remained closed Monday afternoon and all inbound aircraft were being diverted. Non-commercial visitor passes for the base were suspended “to allow the installation to focus entirely on emergency response operations”, officials said in a statement.
Edwards, the vast desert base where Chuck Yeager broke the speed of sound in 1947, is about 100 miles (161km) north of Los Angeles.
Jeff Guzzetti, an aviation safety expert, says he suspects there was some kind of flight control malfunction given how the B-52 crashed so quickly after takeoff without getting very high or going far. But it’s too soon to say what might have caused the control problem.
It’s possible the controls were rigged wrong after maintenance, he said, or there was a catastrophic engine problem or a failure of a piece of equipment that was being tested.
“I think it was definitely a controllability issue. Now, whether that was tied to an engine failure, a flight control failure or some new testing device failure, I’m not sure,” said Guzzetti, who used to investigate crashes for both the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board.
Although the air force has been flying B-52 bombers for more than 70 years, testing out new equipment on a plane can create new challenges.
“A flight test is always riskier than normal operations, so that’s why you have specially trained test pilots, and you should have other safety protocols,” Guzzetti said.
