B-52 bomber crashes after takeoff at U.S. military base in Southern California

By — Christopher Weber, Associated Press Christopher Weber, Associated Press By — Konstantin Toropin, Associated Press Konstantin Toropin, Associated Press Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/b-52-bomber-crashes-after-takeoff-at-u-s-military-base-in-southern-california Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter B-52 bomber crashes after takeoff at U.S. military base in Southern California Politics Updated on Jun 15, 2026 6:15 PM EDT — Published on Jun 15, 2026 4:14 PM EDT LOS ANGELES (AP) — A B-52 bomber crashed shortly after takeoff Monday morning at a U.S. Air Force base in Southern California's Mojave Desert, officials said. There was no information yet on the crew, however 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. Educate your inbox Subscribe to Here’s the Deal, our politics newsletter for analysis you won’t find anywhere else. 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 involving the U.S. military from Vietnam to Iran. The plane crashed at around 11:20 a.m., the military said on the social platform X. By the afternoon, the airfield remained closed 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 Air Force Base is home to a large portion of the U.S. 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. 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. 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 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