Smoke rises from a blackened a part of Edwards Air Pressure Base after the crash of a U.S. Air Pressure B-52 bomber plane in Edwards, California, U.S., June 15, 2026, in a nonetheless picture from information helicopter video.
| Photograph Credit score: Reuters
Eight individuals aboard a B-52 bomber that crashed shortly after takeoff on Monday (June 15, 2026) morning at a U.S. Air Pressure base in Southern California’s Mojave Desert are believed to be lifeless, in line with the Air Pressure.
“Preliminary indications are that the crash was not survivable,” the Edwards Air Pressure Base, north of Los Angeles, posted on social media. The reason for the crash is beneath investigation, officers mentioned.
There was no info but on the crew, nonetheless aerial footage confirmed just about nothing left of an plane.
Emergency crews responded after the plane went down round 11:20 a.m. Black smoke rose from a big swath of charred desert at Edwards Air Pressure Base close to what gave the impression to be a runway, with emergency automobiles close by. The army hasn’t mentioned whether or not the bomber was armed.
The Boeing B-52 Stratofortress is a long-range bomber that entered service in 1955. Designed to hold each typical and nuclear weapons, it has been utilized in conflicts involving the U.S. army from Vietnam to Iran.
By Monday afternoon, the airfield remained closed and all inbound plane had been being diverted.
Non-commercial customer passes for the bottom had been suspended “to permit the set up to focus solely on emergency response operations,” officers mentioned in an announcement.
Edwards Air Pressure Base is house to a big portion of the U.S. Air Pressure’s plane check and improvement efforts and is about 161 km north of Los Angeles.
The 412th Take a look at Wing, which runs the bottom, additionally conducts developmental testing of all Air Pressure plane, weapons methods, software program and elements earlier than buy by the service in addition to all through their lifespan.
The huge desert base can also be the place Air Pressure check pilot Chuck Yeager reached a pace of Mach 1.05 and broke the sound barrier in 1947.
The way in which the B-52 crashed so rapidly after takeoff with out getting very excessive or going far makes aviation security professional Jeff Guzzetti suspect some type of flight management malfunction. However it’s too quickly to say what might need triggered the management drawback.
It is potential the controls had been rigged flawed after upkeep, he mentioned, or a catastrophic engine drawback or a failure of a bit of apparatus that was being examined.
“I feel it was undoubtedly a controllability problem. Now, whether or not that was tied to an engine failure, a flight management failure, or some new testing gadget failure, I am undecided,” mentioned Mr. Guzzetti, who used to research crashes for each the Federal Aviation Administration and the Nationwide Transportation Security Board.
Though the Air Pressure has been flying B-52 bombers for greater than 70 years, testing out new gear on a aircraft can create new challenges.
“A flight check is all the time riskier than regular operations, in order that’s why you might have specifically skilled check pilots, and you must produce other security protocols,” Mr. Guzzetti mentioned.
Printed – June 16, 2026 04:32 am IST