8 killed in B-52 bomber crash in California
The incident occurred at 11:20 local time on Monday while the aircraft was on a routine test mission, creating a huge plume of black smoke into the air that could be seen for miles
ATT Desk Report 
Eight people, including two Boeing employees, were killed after a US Air Force B-52 bomber crashed immediately after taking off from Edwards Air Force Base in southern California.
The incident occurred at 11:20 local time (19:20 GMT) on Monday while the aircraft was on a routine test mission. The crash sent a huge plume of black smoke into the air that could be seen for miles, report BBC and Reuters.
"Today, Edwards Air Force Base experienced a terrible tragedy, and we lost eight great Americans," Col James Hayes said, describing them as a 'mixed crew of military personnel, government civilians and government contractors'.
The base earlier said initial indications suggested the crash 'was not survivable'.
The crew's next of kin are being notified, and their identities will be released 24 hours after that, Hayes said at an afternoon briefing.
The crash was 'otally contained' within Edwards Air Force Base on the runway, Hayes said, and the base has temporarily grounded operations.
The B-52 was supporting the base's radar modernisation programme, he said, and it crashed immediately after take-off before bursting into flames.
After reviewing initial footage, the incident was deemed 'an unrecoverable crash and unsurvivable', Hayes said.
No cause has yet been determined and will not be known until a series of investigations are completed, which could take up to 30 days. Further analysis could take more than six months, Hayes said.
A towering pall of black smoke billowing from the crash site was visible for miles immediately after the accident.
He said the 'mixed crew' aboard the aircraft consisted of government civilians, government contractors and uniformed military personnel. Aerospace giant Boeing, which designed and built the aircraft, said two of its employees were among the dead.
The flight was intended to support a radar modernisation programme, Hayes told reporters. The cause of the crash remains unknown and is under investigation, he added.
Air Force officials did not name the victims, saying they were still in the process of notifying their next of kin.
Aerial footage of the crash site, about 100 miles (161km) north of Los Angeles, showed a charred, smouldering area of desert larger than a football field, while an emergency vehicle was seen driving around the perimeter. From a distance, no large pieces of debris were readily visible in the footage.
Hayes said the crash was quickly 'deemed to be unsurvivable'.
Because of damage to the runway, he said, "we're grounding all operations at Edwards Air Force Base" through at least Tuesday, adding that operations beyond the base would not be suspended.
Edwards, a sprawling test flight facility established in the 1930s around a dry lake bed, covers about 481 square miles (1,245 square kilometres) of the Mojave Desert, making it the Air Force's largest airfield.
Its experimental aviation legacy includes the flight by Chuck Yeager in the Bell X-1 aircraft that broke the sound barrier in 1947, test flights of the X-15 aircraft and the first landings of NASA's space shuttles.
Backbone of bomber force
The B-52 Stratofortress, a long-range, subsonic aircraft built to carry up to 70,000 pounds (31,750kg) of weapons and supplies, has long served as the backbone of the US crewed strategic bomber force, according to the military.
The swept-wing aircraft is capable of deploying the widest range of weapons in the US arsenal, from cluster bombs and gravity bombs to precision-guided missiles and nuclear warheads, at altitudes of up to 50,000 feet (15,166m), according to an Air Force fact sheet. Its combat range extends beyond 8,000 miles without refuelling.
Monday's incident marked the first crash involving a B-52 Stratofortress since the same type of bomber crashed on the island of Guam in May 2016, according to the Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives, a Geneva-based organisation that collects global aviation accident data. All seven crew members aboard that aircraft survived.
Only H models of the B-52 remain in the Air Force inventory.
The aircraft involved in Monday's crash was assigned to the 412th Test Wing, which is based at Edwards. Most B-52s are stationed in North Dakota and Louisiana.
