A B-52 bomber crashed shortly after takeoff Monday morning at a U.S. Air Force base in the Mojave Desert, and all eight people aboard are presumed to be dead, military officials said.
Aerial footage showed virtually nothing left of the aircraft that went down around 11:20 a.m. during a routine test mission at Edwards Air Force Base, north of Los Angeles, the base said on its Facebook page. Black smoke rose from a large swath of charred desert near what appeared to be a runway on the base, with emergency vehicles nearby.
It was not immediately clear what caused the crash.
#BreaingNews: Emergency crews are responding after a B-52 bomber crashed shortly after takeoff from Edwards Air Force Base in California on Monday. pic.twitter.com/0kAbqm7zgR
— KTLA (@KTLA) June 15, 2026
“Initial indications are that the crash was not survivable,” the base posted on social media. The cause is under investigation, officials said.
Emergency crews responded after the aircraft went down around 11:20 a.m. Video from the scene showed a plume of black smoke rising from the desert.
Shortly before 1 p.m., the airfield was closed and all inbound aircraft were being diverted. Meanwhile all 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.
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.
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 U.S. Air Force aircraft, weapons systems, software and components before purchase by the service as well as throughout their lifespan.
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.
The last crash at the base was in 1992, when two crew members died.
The vast desert base is where Chuck Yeager reached a speed of Mach 1.05, breaking the sound barrier, in 1947.
The crash comes almost a year after the pilot of a regional airliner flying over North Dakota made an unexpected sharp turn to avoid a possible midair collision with a military B-52 bomber that was in its flight path last July.
City News Service contributed to this report.
Updated 4:30 p.m. June 15, 2026
