B-52 bomber crashes after takeoff at US military base
A B-52 bomber crashed shortly after takeoff at a U.S. Air Force base in Southern California’s Mojave Desert.
Emergency crews responded after the plane crashed at Edwards Air Force Base around 11:20 a.m. Monday, the Army said in a statement to X.
There is no information yet on whether anyone was injured.
The video taken from the scene showed black smoke rising from the desert.
Shortly before 13:00 the airport was closed and all incoming planes were being diverted.
Meanwhile, all non-commercial visitor passes to the base have been suspended “to allow the installation to focus entirely on emergency response operations,” officials said in a statement.
Typically manning five people, the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress is a long-range bomber that entered service in 1955. Designed to carry both conventional and nuclear weapons, this aircraft has been used in a variety of conflicts, from the Vietnam War to recent operations in the Middle East.
Edwards Air Force Base is home to much of the U.S. Air Force’s aircraft testing and development efforts and is approximately 100 miles north of Los Angeles.
The 412th Test Wing, which operates the base, also conducts developmental testing of all U.S. Air Force aircraft, weapons systems, software and components before they are purchased by the service and throughout their lifetime.
The vast desert base is also where Chuck Yeager broke the speed of sound in 1947.
The crash occurred almost a year after the pilot of a regional airliner flying over North Dakota made an unexpectedly sharp turn to avoid a possible mid-air collision with a military B-52 bomber in the flight path in July 2025.
