Mourning the B52 crew

Getting put on his Ignore list is often a blessing.

 

+1

We may never know.
There were 8 beans aboard....meaning 3 pax, probably.
They were working out at Edwards on something with "testing" in the description - meaning probably 'Secret Squirrel' stuff.
Weather was CAVU.
There were the military equivalent of CVR/FDRs aboard.....but good luck getting those data.
Pretty senior people aboard that bird - eh?
I'm guessing that the NTSB isn't going to be investigating this one - although the three extra pax may be a wildcard.

The Buff is an extraordinarily safe bird, especially when you consider their age and the number of cycles they've amassed.

We'll see.

 

Some other article mentioned that it was in the air about 3 minutes, executed a 180 degree turn, and at the end was 'descending' about 5000/minute, much faster than it should, 'landing' on a parallel runway from where it took off. I believe these details were taken from a flight radar system, not from any visual witness.

 

Besides the ah.....interesting crew composition, the crash site is also interesting.
It didn't 'mush in' like most aircraft at speed.
What we see is a rather compact 'auguring in' suggesting a departure from flight from a stall or loss of pitch control.

If we knew everything the USAF folks know the clouds wouldn't get much thinner.
Scheduled flight duration?
Fuel load?
What was being tested?
How many cycles for this bird?
Lots of recent gripe sheets?
Any weapons aboard?

An all ossifer crew is ops normal for a BUFF.
The USAF rolls like that - sending officers, if not senior officers into harm's way while the enlisted stay behind, but two 05s and three 04s is a little interesting for a 5-bean crew, along with the three civilians - but probably not the stuff of a Tom Clancy novel.
They might have been testing anything from a new interphone system mod to a civilization (or drone) threatening death ray.

Probably closer to the former given the dearth of standers-by.

 

Those videos and telemetry have not been publicly released, so we the public are still going on very sparse other information.

 

Do you think this B-52 was part of the engine replacement program going on at Edwards for B-52s?

 

See also your link in post #3:

"The first re-engined B-52s will be tested at Edwards Air Force Base, California, before the go-ahead is given for the rest of the fleet. As the 76 B-52H bombers receive their new powerplants and a radar upgrade, they will be redesignated B-52Js."

Follow that "radar upgrade" link, the B-52 Radar Modernization Programs starts at page 71:



I live in Boeing's home territory, and saw a local news story about this crash making specific reference to this radar upgrade program, though don't recall the details.

 

B-52 with key radar upgrade flies to Edwards for testing

Makes sense.
Those old mechanically scanned radars are wearing out.
Never knew, but should have suspected that the F/A18 and the F15's radars share that much DNA.