On the fifteenth of June 2026, a B-52 Stratofortress crashed at Edwards Air Pressure Base shortly after take-off. There have been eight on board and no survivors.
The B-52 Stratofortress is a long-range heavy bomber constructed by Boeing. It has eight jet engines mounted in 4 pods with a most takeoff weight of 488,000 kilos. The B-52 entered US Air Pressure service in 1955 as a Chilly Struggle nuclear deterrent, designed to achieve targets deep contained in the Soviet Union. A complete of 744 have been constructed throughout eight variants, labelled A-H.
A number of bombers have been designed to switch The B-52 and it has outlived all of them. As of the start of this yr, the Air Pressure operated 76 of the B-52H, the one variant nonetheless in service, out of the 102 delivered between 1961 and 1962. The fleet is anticipated to stay in service by way of 2050. When a B-52 is destroyed, the Air Pressure can solely backfill by pulling a saved airframe from the Boneyard in Arizona.
This B-52H was serial quantity/tail quantity 60-0061 (fiscal yr 1960 + plane quantity 0061) and acquired the nickname Spirit of Aggieland II whereas on the 307th Bomb Wing within the mid-2010s. Aggieland refers to Texas A&M College (initially referred to as the State Agricultural and Mechanical Faculty of Texas). The B-52 Stratofortress makes use of a “Spirit of [name]” naming conference, with plane formally named “Spirit of [state]” “Spirit of [city]” or “Spirit of [institution]”.
However on this case, it’s a play on phrases, as Spirit of Aggieland is the identify of the official tune of Texas A&M College, based mostly on a poem written in 1925. The B-52 obtained the identify in 2015, when the commander of the 307th Bomb Wing was impressed by a photograph of a P-51 fighter with “Spirit of Aggieland” painted on the nostril throughout World Struggle II.
Scramble wrote that the plane had beforehand carried “Die Laughin’ Jester” and “Man-O-Struggle II” on the port aspect earlier than “Spirit of Aggieland II” however that it arrived at Edwards with no markings in any respect.
Spirit of Aggieland II was on mortgage to the 412th Take a look at Wing, based mostly at Edwards Air Pressure Base, for a sequence of exams supporting the B-52 Radar Modernization Program.
The B-52 is being modernised as a result of there’s nothing to switch it with but. The B-21 Raider is in growth however not in service. The B-1B Lancer is being retired. The B-2 Spirit fleet is small and costly to function. The B-52, the oldest of the lot, is the one the Air Pressure is protecting and to maintain it flying by way of 2050, the service is placing the fleet by way of upgrades that contact nearly each main system. The most important is the Industrial Engine Substitute Program changing the eight Pratt & Whitney TF33 turbofans, which date to the Nineteen Sixties and are more and more troublesome to take care of, with Rolls-Royce F130 engines. In December 2025, Boeing was awarded the contract to change and take a look at two B-52s with the brand new engines forward of a deliberate fleetwide retrofit. Re-engined plane will carry the designation B-52J.
The radar is a separate program. The B-52’s present radar is sufficiently old that substitute components have gotten troublesome to supply. The $3.3 billion Radar Modernization Program replaces it with a brand new system: the AN/APQ-188, constructed by Raytheon and built-in by Boeing. The brand new radar is solid-state, that means it has no transferring components to wear down, and it may monitor a number of targets concurrently. The improve additionally contains new mission computer systems and shows for the navigator stations.
In December 2025, Spirit of Aggieland II went to Boeing’s Kelly facility as the primary to obtain the AN/APQ-188 radar modification. From there, it flew on to Edwards Air Pressure Base for intensive testing all through 2026.
Edwards is dwelling to one of many longest paved runways within the US, at 15,024 toes. (The longest energetic paved runways are Shigatse Peace Airport in Tibet, China, and Ulyanovsk Vostochny Airport in Russia, tied at 16,404 toes or 5,000 metres. The longest within the US is 16,000 toes in Denver, Colorado.)
The B-52 lifted off from the 15,000-foot runway after which dropped sharply, impacting the bottom additional alongside the runway.
The bottom confirmed the mishap on social media after pictures appeared on-line exhibiting a large plume of black smoke rising from the placement. The smoke was seen from climate satellite tv for pc. The B-52H carries as much as 48,000 US gallons of gas (312,197 kilos/141,610 kilogrammes).
The B-52H has a regular crew of 5: plane commander, pilot, radar navigator, navigator, and digital warfare officer. The plane that crashed at Edwards had eight, together with two Boeing workers.
One of many early stories on the Edwards crash known as it the deadliest B-52 accident since 1982. Once I went to look, I discovered two deadly B-52 crashes solely a yr aside. In October 1981, a B-52D on a low-level night time coaching mission crashed into sand dunes close to La Junta, Colorado, killing all eight crew. A witness driving to her bakery within the pre-dawn darkish noticed the explosion: “I believed at first it was the Northern Lights. However then I figured one thing blew up, like a fuel station. Nevertheless it was too massive for that.”
Then on the twenty ninth of November 1982, a B-52G caught hearth on the bottom at Fort Air Pressure Base in California. Nobody was injured however the runway was badly broken and the Fort AFB coaching operations have been moved 100 miles north, to Mather Air Pressure Base.
A number of weeks later, a kind of coaching plane, a B-52G, crashed after take-off, killing all 9 on board.
The archived model of the now defunct Challenge Get Out and Stroll, a website devoted to the historical past of plane ejection methods, quotes an electronic mail from Retired USAF Msgt Jeff Noeker:
This incident concerned two of Fort’s coaching plane. They took off as a MITO (Minimal Interval Take Off) The lead plane was a B-52 H with TF-33 fan jet engines. The #2 plane was a B-52G with J-57 turbojet engines. Usually, the turbofan engine generates about 5000 kilos extra thrust than the J-57 and that’s the reason the H-Mannequin went first. However on this occasion, the G-Mannequin was utilizing water injection which causes the J-57 to fulfill or exceed the thrust of a TF-33. 1200 gals of demineralized water is injected at two factors into the engines and is used up in lower than two minutes. This truth was not considered through the planning of this mission because the beforehand defined situation not often , if ever, truly occurred. Nevertheless, on this occasion it did. After liftoff, the G-Mannequin rapidly started overtaking the H-Mannequin. To stop collision, the scholar pilot retarded the throttles with out giving consideration to the water injection getting used. This could haven’t have mattered because the water injection system is meant to chop out robotically when the throttles are decreased past a sure level because the engines can’t tolerate that a lot water at a lower than optimum energy setting. Because of a malfunction, the water did NOT shut off and the engines have been unable to deal with it. They started flaming out. The plane was almost at it’s max gross weight of 250 tons and there was was not sufficient altitude to get well, that quickly after take off.
The lack of life in a crash is at all times tragic. And but, in some way, I discover the lack of Spirit of Aggieland II significantly unhappy. Will probably be fairly a while earlier than we all know precisely what occurred; the plane was destroyed and largely consumed by the fierce hearth after affect. The remainder of the Stratofortress fleet was meant to be up to date after the intensive testing and validation at Edwards however whether or not the upgraded B-52J will lead the fleet into the subsequent 25 years is again to being an open query.
