LOS ANGELES: Eight people died when a US B-52 bomber crashed and erupted into a catastrophic fire shortly after takeoff at an air force base in California on Monday, officials said.
The heavy bomber was on a routine testing mission with a mixture of military, government and civilian contractors on board when it came down in a fireball at Edwards Air Force Base, 60 miles (95 kilometers) north of Los Angeles.
Footage of the aftermath of the crash, which officials said was "unsurvivable," showed a large charred patch of ground on which almost nothing remained of the huge plane manufactured by Boeing.
"Edwards Air Force Base experienced a horrible tragedy, and we lost eight great Americans," Colonel James Hayes told reporters at the base.
Hayes said the B-52 Stratofortress -- a long-range bomber used by the US military since the 1950s -- was on a test sortie as part of a radar modernization process.
"It took off, and immediately after takeoff, crashed and burst into flames," he said, adding emergency services quickly swung into action, but soon determined that there would be no one to rescue.
"After reviewing the footage of the crash, it was deemed that this was an unrecoverable crash and unsurvivable."
There was no immediate indication as to the cause of the tragedy, and a safety investigation probe was immediately begun.
The crash happened around lunchtime at the base, a major operations center for the US military, and was contained within the perimeter, Hayes told reporters.
In the aftermath of the accident, the airfield was closed and all inbound aircraft were being diverted, the base said on social media.
Hayes said the identities of those who perished would not be released until all next of kin had been informed, a process he said was ongoing and could last for the rest of the day.
Boeing said two of those killed were employees of the company and it expressed its condolences to families of all the victims.
The B-52 is a heavy bomber that first flew in 1954 and was originally designed for war with the Soviet Union. It has received continual upgrades to keep it in service for decades since the Cold War's end.
Designed to carry both conventional and nuclear weapons, it has been used in conflicts involving the U.S. military from Vietnam to Iran.
In 2025, Boeing sent a B-52 to Edwards with a new, modernized radar system. A test team planned to conduct ground and flight test activities on the aircraft throughout 2026 to feed a production decision, the air force said in a 2025 news release. The modern Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar system replaced the aircraft’s antiquated radar for efficacy.
It was unclear if that was the same aircraft involved in Monday’s crash.
Edwards Air Force Base is home to a large portion of the US Air Force’s aircraft test and development efforts and is about 100 miles (161 km) north of Los Angeles. The 412th Test Wing, which runs the base, also conducts developmental testing of all Air Force aircraft, weapons systems, software and components before purchase by the service as well as throughout their lifespan.
The vast desert base is also where Air Force test pilot Chuck Yeager reached a speed of Mach 1.05 and broke the sound barrier in 1947.
It’s too soon to say what might have happened. 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.
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,” 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.
