As Mourning Begins, ᴅᴇᴀᴅly B-52 Crash Highlights Age of Bomber Fleet

In the 10 years or so that Jeromy Smith worked as a flight test engineer at Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California, his wife said, he spoke over and over about the job’s risks.

“He loved his work — as a child, he knew he wanted to go into aeronautics,” Lauren Smith, 30, recalled in an interview on Tuesday about her 32-year-old husband. But as the father of two young children, he also understood the danger inherent to frequent test flights in military aircraft.

“All the time, he would talk about it,” she said.

On Monday, his worst fears came to pᴀss with the crash of a B-52 bomber shortly after takeoff from the base. The aircraft burst into flames, and all eight crew members were killed in the conflagration, which was visible across the Mojave Desert for miles.

The cause of the crash, which occurred at 11:20 a.m. Monday, moments into a routine test mission, is under investigation. Air Force officials, who called it “unsurvivable,” said it could take up to six months to determine what happened.

B-52 bombers, which have been in use by the U.S. military since the 1950s, are known for their immense size, reliability and safety, but also for their advanced age. The test flight on Monday had been part of an Air Force initiative to upgrade the plane’s outdated radar and other avionics, which have long been vulnerable to antiaircraft systems.

Ms. Smith said the flight was supposed to have taken place last Friday, shortly after her husband, a civilian employee of the Defense Department, had returned to work from paternity leave for the birth of their younger son, who is now 4 months old.