B-52 bomber crashes after takeoff at US military base in southern California

A B-52 bomber crashed shortly after takeoff on Monday morning at a US air force base in California’s Mojave Desert, officials said.

Emergency crews were responding after the aircraft went down at about 11.20am at Edwards air force base, the military said on the social platform X. There was no immediate information on whether anyone was hurt.

Video from the scene showed a huge plume of black smoke rising from the desert.

Shortly before 1pm, the airfield was closed and all inbound aircraft were being diverted. Meanwhile all non-commercial visitor passes for the base were suspended “to allow the installation to focus entirely on emergency response operations”, officials said in a statement.

The Boeing B-52 Stratofortress, typically crewed by five people, is a long-range bomber that entered service in 1955. Designed to carry both conventional and nuclear weapons, it has been used in conflicts ranging from the Vietnam war to recent operations in the Middle East.

Edwards, the vast desert base where Chuck Yeager broke the speed of sound in 1947, is about 100 miles (161km) north of Los Angeles.

The crash comes almost a year after the pilot of a regional airliner flying over North Dakota last July made an unexpected sharp turn to avoid a possible midair collision with a military B-52 bomber that was in its flight path.