2026 United States Air Force Boeing B-52 crash
plane crash of a B-52 of the United States Air Force in 2026
On June 15, 2026, a United States Air Force Boeing B-52 Stratofortress strategic bomber crashed shortly after takeoff near Edwards Air Force Base in Edwards, California, United States. All eight crew members were killed.
The accident was the first crash of a B-52 since 2016, when one crashed at Andersen Air Force Base in Guam, injuring the seven crew members. It is also the deadliest crash of a B-52 since 1982, when one crashed at Mather Air Force Base in Sacramento County, California, killing all nine crew members.
Background
Aircraft
The aircraft involved in the accident was 60-0061, a Boeing B-52H Stratofortress operated by the United States Air Force, and assigned to the 412th Test Wing. 60-0061 was operated by the 307th Bomb Wing in the mid-2010s, where it was nicknamed The Spirit of Aggieland II. In December 2025, Edwards Air Force Base said the aircraft had flown from Port San Antonio to the base after receiving an upgraded radar system as part of an ongoing modernization program.
Passengers and crew
The aircraft was carrying eight people, including military personnel, civilians and contractors, on a routine test mission. Boeing confirmed that two of its employees were among the occupants. The flight was intended to support an active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar modernization program.
Accident
The crash was reported at 11:20 a.m.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “2026 United States Air Force Boeing B-52 crash” is plane crash of a B-52 of the United States Air Force in 2026. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through United, States and Force, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q140236513. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2026, 2016, 1982 and 2025.
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This entry incorporates text from “2026 United States Air Force Boeing B-52 crash” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.