First Crash of a Billion Dollar B-2 Stealth Bomber
The U.S Air Force is reporting today the first crash of a Northrop Grumman B-2 stealth bomber in Guam, with both crew members ejecting successfully. The B-2 first flew in July 1989 and became operational in 1993, and has flown combat missions against targets in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. Considering this is the first major mishap in almost 19 years of operation, the B-2 flying wing design has proved to be quite safe.
I had several brushes with the B-2 throughout it's early development history, even though I worked as an engineer for the U.S. Navy, and not the Air Force. At one time the B-2 was considered top secret due to the nature of its radar evading stealth technology. I remember back in the mid-1980s I was doing some work at the Douglas plant in Palmdale, California, on the T-45 trainer for the U.S. Navy. As we were driving into the Douglas plant, we saw a huge heavily guarded building next door. This building was surrounded by two lines of barbed-wire-topped fence, and had armed guards with German Shepherds patrolling the perimeter. When we asked the engineers in the Douglas plant what's with all the security next door, they mentioned that was where Northrop (before the merger with Grumman) was developing a top secret aircraft, but that's all they knew. A few years later, after the B-2 design had been released publicly, I just happened to be driving through Palmdale on my way back from the China Lake Naval Weapons Center on the day (July 17, 1989) the B-2 flew for the first time. I stopped at an overlook on highway 14 outside of Palmdale and watched as the graceful flying wing took to the air for the first time on a short flight over to the U.S. Air Force flight test center at Edwards Air Force Base where it would undergo most of its flight test program.
As it turns out, my next brush with the B-2 was a few years later when I was at Edwards AFB participating in a T-45 mishap investigation. The T-45 had flown in from the Navy's Patuxent River, Maryland facility flight for a few months of flight testing in the desert. On its very first landing at Edwards, the solo pilot encountered extreme shimmy in the nose wheel during roll out. Unable to control the direction of the T-45, the pilot elected to eject at ground level as the T-45 veered off the runway. Though the pilot landed safely under his parachute, the T-45 careened through the desert, its jet engine still running at a low power setting. Turns out it was headed straight towards the B-2 flight test hangar, which the Air Force, for security reasons, had built on the opposite side of the main Edwards runway, away from all the other flight test hangars. Fortunately, as the T-45 was continuing on a collision course will a lot of very expensive, very secret B-2 hardware, it ran into the foundation of an old building that was still in the desert scrub. The foundation sheared off the landing gear and brought the T-45 to a halt, though the engine was still running. A brave ground crew quickly climbed into the cockpit and shut down the engine. When I arrived the next day, the T-45 was still sitting on it's belly off the side of the runway. When I stood by the fuselage and looked where the nose was pointing, it was directly at the B-2 flight test hangar only a couple of hundred yards away. If it hadn't been for that old foundation stopping the T-45, the Navy might have received a very large bill from the Air Force for a damaged B-2.
My last contact with the B-2 program took place at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. I was there participating in some ejection seat tests at the Holloman High Speed Test Track, when I ran into an Air Force engineer, Marty, whom I had worked with before. Marty was the lead engineer on the B-2 crew escape system, and they had just completed the ejection seat sled test program the week before. I didn't hesitate to say yes when Marty asked me if I wanted to see the B-2 ejection seat sled test article. When I went into the hangar where they kept the sled, it didn't look anything like I expected. Instead of the flying wing design of the B-2, the sled test article looked like a Manta Ray with up swept wing tips. Typically ejection seat rocket sled tests use just the cockpit section of the aircraft, since on the actual aircraft, the wing is usually behind or below the fuselage, and does not effect the airflow over the cockpit section. But with the flying wing design of the B-2, the wing and fuselage are basically one and the same. Marty told me that to get the correct aerodynamic flow over where the ejection seats exit the cockpit, the engineers had to come up with an aerodynamic equivalent of the flying wing, without the huge expense and weight limitations of a full span sled. Wind tunnel tests showed that the cool looking Manta Ray-like swept tips produced the same aerodynamics over the cockpit as if the sled article had a complete wing span. An added benefit of the tall wing tips was the ability to add internal high speed cameras to them to record the early phases of the ejection sequence, including hatch jettison and the seats exiting the cockpit. Another item Marty mentioned to me was that the B-2 was designed to have an optional third crewmember located behind the side-by-side pilot and co-pilot, and the sled test article had the provision for a third ACES II ejection seat. Apparently part of qualifying the escape system for the B-2 included at least one test with three seats being ejected. As far as I know, though, all of the operational B-2s only have two crew members/ejection seats in them, but could be modified with a third ejection seat if required.
Due to the large development costs of the B-2 bomber and the small number of aircraft actually produced (21), the per unit cost of each stealth bomber is estimated at over $1 billion each. Sometimes I half-jokingly wondered, if a B-2 pilot ever faced an emergency, would he hesitate to eject and try to save the airplane because he didn't want to get the bill for a billion dollar airplane? Fortunately it looks like the crew in this mishap made the right decision and got out as soon as they know something was wrong.
I had several brushes with the B-2 throughout it's early development history, even though I worked as an engineer for the U.S. Navy, and not the Air Force. At one time the B-2 was considered top secret due to the nature of its radar evading stealth technology. I remember back in the mid-1980s I was doing some work at the Douglas plant in Palmdale, California, on the T-45 trainer for the U.S. Navy. As we were driving into the Douglas plant, we saw a huge heavily guarded building next door. This building was surrounded by two lines of barbed-wire-topped fence, and had armed guards with German Shepherds patrolling the perimeter. When we asked the engineers in the Douglas plant what's with all the security next door, they mentioned that was where Northrop (before the merger with Grumman) was developing a top secret aircraft, but that's all they knew. A few years later, after the B-2 design had been released publicly, I just happened to be driving through Palmdale on my way back from the China Lake Naval Weapons Center on the day (July 17, 1989) the B-2 flew for the first time. I stopped at an overlook on highway 14 outside of Palmdale and watched as the graceful flying wing took to the air for the first time on a short flight over to the U.S. Air Force flight test center at Edwards Air Force Base where it would undergo most of its flight test program.
As it turns out, my next brush with the B-2 was a few years later when I was at Edwards AFB participating in a T-45 mishap investigation. The T-45 had flown in from the Navy's Patuxent River, Maryland facility flight for a few months of flight testing in the desert. On its very first landing at Edwards, the solo pilot encountered extreme shimmy in the nose wheel during roll out. Unable to control the direction of the T-45, the pilot elected to eject at ground level as the T-45 veered off the runway. Though the pilot landed safely under his parachute, the T-45 careened through the desert, its jet engine still running at a low power setting. Turns out it was headed straight towards the B-2 flight test hangar, which the Air Force, for security reasons, had built on the opposite side of the main Edwards runway, away from all the other flight test hangars. Fortunately, as the T-45 was continuing on a collision course will a lot of very expensive, very secret B-2 hardware, it ran into the foundation of an old building that was still in the desert scrub. The foundation sheared off the landing gear and brought the T-45 to a halt, though the engine was still running. A brave ground crew quickly climbed into the cockpit and shut down the engine. When I arrived the next day, the T-45 was still sitting on it's belly off the side of the runway. When I stood by the fuselage and looked where the nose was pointing, it was directly at the B-2 flight test hangar only a couple of hundred yards away. If it hadn't been for that old foundation stopping the T-45, the Navy might have received a very large bill from the Air Force for a damaged B-2.
My last contact with the B-2 program took place at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. I was there participating in some ejection seat tests at the Holloman High Speed Test Track, when I ran into an Air Force engineer, Marty, whom I had worked with before. Marty was the lead engineer on the B-2 crew escape system, and they had just completed the ejection seat sled test program the week before. I didn't hesitate to say yes when Marty asked me if I wanted to see the B-2 ejection seat sled test article. When I went into the hangar where they kept the sled, it didn't look anything like I expected. Instead of the flying wing design of the B-2, the sled test article looked like a Manta Ray with up swept wing tips. Typically ejection seat rocket sled tests use just the cockpit section of the aircraft, since on the actual aircraft, the wing is usually behind or below the fuselage, and does not effect the airflow over the cockpit section. But with the flying wing design of the B-2, the wing and fuselage are basically one and the same. Marty told me that to get the correct aerodynamic flow over where the ejection seats exit the cockpit, the engineers had to come up with an aerodynamic equivalent of the flying wing, without the huge expense and weight limitations of a full span sled. Wind tunnel tests showed that the cool looking Manta Ray-like swept tips produced the same aerodynamics over the cockpit as if the sled article had a complete wing span. An added benefit of the tall wing tips was the ability to add internal high speed cameras to them to record the early phases of the ejection sequence, including hatch jettison and the seats exiting the cockpit. Another item Marty mentioned to me was that the B-2 was designed to have an optional third crewmember located behind the side-by-side pilot and co-pilot, and the sled test article had the provision for a third ACES II ejection seat. Apparently part of qualifying the escape system for the B-2 included at least one test with three seats being ejected. As far as I know, though, all of the operational B-2s only have two crew members/ejection seats in them, but could be modified with a third ejection seat if required.
Due to the large development costs of the B-2 bomber and the small number of aircraft actually produced (21), the per unit cost of each stealth bomber is estimated at over $1 billion each. Sometimes I half-jokingly wondered, if a B-2 pilot ever faced an emergency, would he hesitate to eject and try to save the airplane because he didn't want to get the bill for a billion dollar airplane? Fortunately it looks like the crew in this mishap made the right decision and got out as soon as they know something was wrong.
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