Officials said eight people are presumed dead after a B-52 bomber crashed shortly after takeoff on Monday morning at a U.S. Air Force base in California’s Mojave Desert.

“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, News.Az reports, citing The Guardian.

“Initial indications are that the crash was not survivable. Emergency response personnel are on scene, and officials are working to account for all personnel.”

Those who died comprised military members, government employees and civilian contractors, according to James Hayes, the deputy commander at Edwards air force base. Officials do not plan to release the names of those who died in the crash until after next of kin are notified, he said.

“Right now our thoughts and prayers are with the families of those that lost their loved ones,” Hayes said at a news conference.

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 plane was being flown on a test mission as part of a program to modernize its radar from analog to digital, according to ABC News 7. The program aims to keep planes like the one that crashed in service until the year 2050, or about a century of total use.

Officials said they could not provide details about how the crash occurred. Officials have begun to collect information for a safety review that will then be submitted to an accident investigation board that will then determine how much of its findings to make public, Hayes said. The process may take up to six months.

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 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.

News.Az 

By Ulviyya Salmanli