Civilian flight test engineer among 8 killed in B-52 crash had recently welcomed a baby
One of eight people killed when a B-52 Stratofortress crashed at Edwards Air Force Base in California’s Mojave Desert was a civilian flight test engineer and father to two young boys who had just celebrated a family milestone.
Lauren Smith said she and her husband, Jeromy Smith, recently welcomed their second child. The couple’s fourth wedding anniversary was Thursday.
“Not seeing this coming at all kind of flipped our world upside-down,” Smith said Tuesday at her Bakersfield home about miles west of the military base.
Jeromy Smith was part of Monday’s radar test mission when the B-52 bomber crashed shortly after takeoff. Those onboard when the plane went down about 100 miles north of Los Angeles included members of the military, government civilians and government contractors, officials said.
The couple’s children are 4 months and 2 years old.
“I’m really sad he doesn’t get to watch them grow up, but I hope, hope that I do them proud and grow them to be wonderful human beings just like he was,” Lauren Smith said.
Jeromy Smith grew up in Oregon, but had been working at the base for about 10 years. Lauren Smith said her husband loved his job and the B-52 bomber, a workhorse of the U.S. Air Force.
She recalled Jeromy Smith making a bottle for their baby on the morning of the test flight, which he told her had been delayed by about a week, and kissing her good-bye. Later that day, she received a heartbreaking phone call.
“I had a friend call me and tell me that there was a plane crash, and I turned on the TV and saw on social media that it was my husband’s plane,” Lauren Smith said. “I didn’t get any messages, no phone calls from his work. Which hurt because I spent so much time waiting and waiting and waiting to hear something.”
A base commander and chaplain arrived around 6 p.m. at her house to share information, Smith said.
“Until they showed up, I was just keeping hope and prayers because I didn’t want to accept that he was gone,” she said.
The crash was reported at about 11:20 a.m. at the remote base about 100 miles north of Los Angeles. In a news release Monday afternoon, the base said eight people were on the aircraft during a routine test mission.
Col. James Hayes, the deputy commander for the 412 test wing at the air force base, said at a press conference that, “We lost eight great Americans” in the crash. The Boeing Company later confirmed two of its employees were among the eight passengers on board who died.
Video showed black smoke rising from an area near the airfield, which was closed.All inbound aircraft were diverted, the base said.
Details about what led to the crash were not immediately available. Determining a cause could take months, authorities said.
The Associated Press, using limited tracking data from AirNav Systems, reported Tuesday that the plane made a sharp right and then nearly completed a 180-degree turn before plunging to the ground at nearly a mile a minute.
The Boeing B-52 Stratofortress, which generally has a crew of five, is a long-range bomber used for a variety of military missions. Capable of subsonic speeds and altitudes of 50,000 feet, the bomber was a mainstay of Operation Desert Storm in 1991 and other conflicts. The B-52, which can carry both conventional and nuclear weapons, has been the backbone of the United States’ bomber force for decades.
Last year, a regional airliner pilot flying over North Dakota made an unexpected sharp turn to avoid a possible midair collision with a B-52 bomber that was in its flight path.
Edwards Air Force Base, covering 480 square miles in Kern County, is used for research, development and testing of U.S. Air Force aircraft, weapons systems, software and components.
The base was where famed pilot Chuck Yeager broke the speed of sound in 1947. It served as the West Coast base for dozens of NASA Space Shuttle landings and a testing ground for the now-retired orbiters. Atlantis was the last shuttle to land at Edwards AFB in 2009.
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