Eight people were killed when a U.S. Air Force B-52 bomber crashed after takeoff at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
“We lost eight great Americans,” James Hayes, deputy commander of Edwards Air Force Base, said at a news conference.
Aerial footage showed almost nothing left of the plane that went down at 11:20 a.m. local time (18:20 GMT), the base said.
The military base has launched an interim security board to gather preliminary facts, which will be followed by a security investigation. The entire process could take up to six months, Hayes said.
Emergency teams respond quickly after plane goes down
Emergency crews responded immediately after the crash but the air base said in an earlier social media post that initial indications were that “the crash was not survivable.”
After the plane fell on the base, the entire airspace was closed and all incoming flights were diverted.
The crew on board the ship had been engaged in routine test missions before the disaster.
The cause of the crash is under investigation.
Edwards Air Force Base is about 100 miles (161 kilometers) north of Los Angeles and is home to a large portion of the Air Force’s secret aircraft testing efforts.
What is the B-52 bomber?
The plane that went down was a Boeing B-52 bomber, officially known as the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress.
The jets, typically manned by five people, entered service in 1995.
The B-52 was engineered to provide the US with a significant advantage in nuclear strategic capabilities during the Cold War, particularly against the Soviet Union, which had no intercontinental bomber at the time.
Designed to carry both conventional and nuclear weapons, it has been used in conflicts ranging from the Vietnam War to more recent operations in the Middle East.
Edited by: Wesley Dockery
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