'Not Survivable': US Air Force B-52 Bomber Crashes Moments After Takeoff At Edwards Air Force Base, All 8 Onboard Aircraft Dead

California: A United States Air Force B-52 bomber crashed shortly after taking off on Monday at Edwards Air Force base in Southern California’s Mojave Desert, with the military officials fearing that none of the crew survived. The aircraft reportedly went down around 11.20 am during a routine test mission at Edwards Air Force Base, located north of Los Angeles. The aerial images showed little of the plane remaining, with black smoke billowing from a wide area near a runway as emergency vehicles rushed to the site to initiate a rescue operation.

The base confirmed the deadly update through its social media page, stating that “initial indications are that the crash was not survivable”. All 8 people on board are presumed dead, though the cause of the accident had not been ascertained by the time of writing of the news. The officials informed that an investigation was underway to establish what went wrong with the decades-old aircraft.

Following the deadly crash of the B-52 bomber, Edwards Air Force Base immediately halted operations. The airfield was closed, all incoming flights were diverted, and non-commercial visitor passes were suspended for the day. In a statement, the base officials stated that the restrictions were necessary as emergency crews tackled the fire and worked to account for every member of personnel. The base sits around 161 km north of Los Angeles and is central to the US Air Force’s aircraft testing programme.

As per defence experts, the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress has been in service since 1955 and is built for long-range missions carrying both conventional and nuclear weapons. It has seen action in conflicts from Vietnam through to more recent operations involving Iran. At Edwards, the 412th Test Wing manages developmental trials of aircraft, weapons systems, software and components both before they are bought and throughout their service life.

Reports suggested that the vast desert facility is also part of aviation folklore, as it was here that Air Force test pilot Chuck Yeager first broke the sound barrier in 1947, reaching Mach 1.05 in the Bell X-1. The legacy made Monday’s crash all the more sobering for the engineers, pilots and families who live and work at the base.
 

The officials asserted that it remains too early to pinpoint the cause of the bomber to fall from the sky so soon after departure. The aviation safety expert Jeff Guzzetti said that the aircraft’s inability to gain height or distance suggested a loss of control. “The way the B-52 crashed so quickly after takeoff without getting very high or going far makes aviation safety expert Jeff Guzzetti suspect some kind of flight control malfunction,” he explained.

Guzzetti, who previously led crash investigations for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), outlined several possibilities. “It’s possible the controls were rigged wrong after maintenance, he said, or 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,” he said.

The expert also noted that flight testing carries risks beyond normal operations. “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.

Amidst examination of the flight data and any experimental equipment that may have been on board, the focus at Edwards remains on supporting the families of the eight crew members and understanding how a mission that began routinely ended in loss.